During February 26th's march, there were reports of as many as 100,000 people jammed onto the square, marching around the capitol like it was Jericho

What does it look like to have 100,000 people chanting and circling around a state capitol building? When it’s Wisconsin’s capitol, it looks a lot like a national protest against the troop surge in Washington D.C. Sure, our square is smaller than theirs, but it sure was heartening to see so many thousands of people from all different walks of life out on the square, marching with printed signs, unique hand-written signs, flags, and bullhorns as we braved the massive snowflakes that were rapidly filling up the square and causing us all to slide up and down the road. My friends and I briefly made a sliding competition out of it, skating wildly through the protesters on grayish slush that was being pummeled by new feet every few seconds.

We saw union dogs (with adorable cardboard sandwich board signs on them) and a band of roving vuvuezela marchers. We saw the Fox News truck and laughed at it. There apparently has been thousands and thousands of dollars donated to Ian’s Pizza (a Madison institution) from all 50 states and over 60 nations around the world, and so I waited in line to get a delicious slice of spicy cheesesteak pizza, gratis thanks to a donor that could live in New Hampshire, Florida, Antarctica, or even Jordan (I hope it was the latter). There was another line for coffee as well, but I was set for now.

Michaelangelo's had this great sign in front of their little table at the capitol (click to embiggen)

We stopped by the Irish bar, Brocach on the square, and everyone in there was linking arms, singing “Solidarity Forever,” the union song, and shouting “Recall Walker” and “Kill the Bill.” The only time I’ve seen this much camaraderie in Wisconsin before is before, during, or after a football game, but it brings joy to my heart that it’s social justice and politics that are doing it this time. I thought that Wisconsin as a state had signed its progressive death knell in November of 2010 when the GOP took over in droves, but seeing all of these union members, public employees, students (Midwesterners and Coasties alike!) and seniors all out to put an end to this bill is incredible. I hope that regardless of how this turns out, that Wisconsin never forgets that we are a progressive, activist state, even if that has lain dormant since the Vietnam days, and we never let Republicans take our great state away from us again as they’re attempting to now, at this very moment as I’m typing these words, behind closed, locked doors in our closed, locked capitol.

A closed and locked capitol? How can this be? Aren’t law-abiding, peaceful taxpayers allowed to access “The People’s House” at all times, whenever they want? Yes! Or at least, that’s how it’s always been in our state. Walker has some new ideas. He’s obviously not very pleased by the fact that we’ve undermined a bill that he assumed he could ramrod through in 4 business days (Debuted on February 11th, was hoping for a vote to pass by February 17th). He doesn’t like that we know all about his connection to the billionaire Koch Bros; professional corporate dictators. He doesn’t like that every day the capitol building is surrounded by usually thousands, at least hundreds of activists at all times. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like being booed out of Madison restaurants and refused service – that last one is just hearsay from a friend of a friend who works at a restaurant that Walker and his wife apparently tried to visit a few weeks ago. They told him to get out.

This statue of Liberty (or Democracy, or whomever) stands at the corner of the square facing State St. Over the past three weeks she's worn blindfolds, sad faces, and even Anonymous' Guy Fawkes masks

So what’s a frustrated failure of a new GOP governor to do? Easy! Violate Wisconsin constitutional law and prevent citizens from accessing the capitol in order to make the TV viewers think that during your speech there are no protesters around! I guess they gave up and went home, you can picture him chuckling to Bill O’RLY. Yes, as of Sunday, the governor started bringing in busloads of rural Wisconsin’s village police officers to seal off the capitol, and emptied out all but 60-100 of the protesters in the guise of “we need to clean the capitol [because you hippies smell of freedom and democracy]” (emphasis added). Protesters who left were told that they could re-enter later, but were barred when they returned. This has been going on for the past three days now.

Many of us believe that the reason behind the clear-out was for Walker’s televised budget announcement from the capitol building yesterday. He didn’t want all of the noise that angry activists tend to generate to come with him on the camera, so he illegally has barred entry to peaceful activists. Lawyer groups in Wisconsin have asked for a restraining order to be put on the executive branch to prevent the police from cutting Capitol access, but one of Walker’s mouthpieces has said, “we’re in complete compliance with the law!” and has continued to operate on a 1-out-1-in idea. The line to get into the capitol stretches around the entire square. I’ve looked up the facts; the occupant capacity of the Wisconsin capitol is 9,000 people. There’s barely 100 in now, if that. Obviously, Walker might (briefly) succeed in getting Fox News watchers to believe that the relative quiet during his speech is because we now support him, but anyone who follows real news (or reads the blogs of activists, like this one!) will know that this is far, far from the truth.

Other amusing videos include this one, From Fox News and Bill O’RLY, overtly insinuating (falsely) that protests and personal confrontations here in Madison have been violent. Yes Bill, and we’re still waiting for that shipment of palm trees in the background to arrive, too. Apparently, Fox got footage of a union rally in California, played it as Bill talked about Wisconsin, and then put the bland subtitle of “union protest” under it. And this is a network that calls itself “Fair and Balanced.” Just remembering that Obama allowed this cretin to interview him before the Super Bowl fills me with disgust. Obama and anyone with a brain should not be justifying Fox’s existence; it should be treated with the same level of dignity and respect as is given to the National Enquirer.

See if you can spot the four separate squadrons of police officers in this picture. Now multiple this by 8 to get the full number in the "outer ring" around the capitol

I walked around the capitol after work yesterday, had a slice of pizza, and watched the police watch the protesters. There’s so many of them now, compared to what there were a few weeks ago. Around the square itself there are groups of 2 or 3 every few meters, all clad in yellow jackets. Around the capitol building itself it’s even tighter. I asked some of the Dane county troopers in the outer ring “are these Madison police working with you?” They chuckled dryly and told me that Walker was bringing them in from everywhere and that the whole thing was a giant cock-up (yes, one of them actually said cock-up). “They’re all from in-state though, right?” I confirmed. “He doesn’t have the ability to request out-of-state troopers, right?” They grinned and one said, “Heck no. He barely has the authority to tell Wisconsin cops what to do.” OH SNAP GOVERNOR.

So where does this leave us? The “Fab 14,” the fourteen Democratic senators who fled the state a week ago to avoid creating a quorum in the Senate and therefore preventing the doomed vote from occurring in the Republican-controlled senate, are still “on the run” even though Walker has been sending troopers and cops to hunt for them wherever he has authority. The Democratic assembly is fighting another doomed battle by trying to weigh down the bill with amendments. Walker has cut requirements for corporations to need to recycle (what?) and also ordered that any new wind turbine generators must be over 1,800 feet tall (effectively creating massive new barriers to entry for clean-energy startup companies, since turbines are usually built at 400-500 feet for cost reasons). We’d like to point out that Walker’s corporate leash-holders do not own wind-turbine companies, and therefore are quite interested in making sure that customers will be forced to continue to use fossil fuels. Watch this space for more information when Walker rolls out inevitable tax hikes for companies that create solar power panels, as well.

Most importantly, if you are a Wisconsinite, vote in the April 5th supreme court election. We need to get progressives back in our government and therefore electing the liberal frontrunner JoAnne Kloppenburg to our highest court is imperative. The republicans currently control the Wisconsin court, 4-3. Obviously, if we can gain JoAnne to our side in April, the balance will swing 3-4 to the Democrats’ favor. This will make a judicial decision on the legality of the executive branch’s decision to close off the capitol to the public likely an important win to begin putting stops to the train wreck that is Walker’s brief term in office.

This could be the most important election in Wisconsin’s history. After failing to stand up for humanity and civil rights in the devastating election of November 2010, this could be our chance to get back on the right path again. Indeed, this might be Wisconsin’s last chance to save itself.

P.S. Please be one of the chain-letter sending thousands who support the Fab 14, too. Signing this simple letter for MoveOn will hopefully continue to galvanize their resolve to stand up to Walker on Wisconsin’s behalf even as they’re forced to be separated from their friends and families.

One of my favorite signs: "Walker is a Vikings fan" Yeah Walker, you heard what the sign said!

On a more local level, Wisconsin has suddenly gone activist out of nowhere. National news is following the stories of the rebellion against Scott Walker, the new Republican governor of Wisconsin, and his controversial ideas about how he claims he wants to bring Wisconsin’s budget under control. How does he want to do this? Attack the public sector, i.e. the schools, universities, and everyone that those sectors employ. How? With massive hikes in what they pay for their benefits and pensions. What else does he want to do? Utterly cripple the union system that attempts to defend workers against just this sort of abuse of power. Why? Because unions “take too long and Wisconsin has run out of money now.” He claims that if he doesn’t neuter the unions, they’ll drag out discussions and arguments about how to best take action in their own interests for 15 months, “time Wisconsin just doesn’t have.”

I won’t take up your precious time explaining the hard facts of the matter, when many national news articles have done it already. Nor do I need to go into just how loud and how angry the crowds of thousands and thousands of union members, students, and regular people have been as they flood into the capitol to protest the “Budget Repair Bill,” that’s been done by several different sources. However, I’ll just tell things from my point of view.

This guy is such a hippie he wore a bike helmet to a protest. He's probably a vegan, too.

On February 15th, the first major protests started occurring, starting at about 9 or 10 in the morning. I took a vacation day and biked to the capitol, enjoying the somewhat warmer weather and being back on a bike again after 3 months away from it (the bike in question was less pleased to be ridden after two years of being packed into a storage shed while its owner was off gallivanting in Jordan and creaked angrily at me. Note to self: clean and lubricate bicycle). Even three blocks away from the capitol on a Tuesday morning, the traffic was getting stalled and a cop was barking curt orders at cars that were trying to navigate and weave about him. As I drew closer to the intersection, he leveled a meaty hand at me and bawled “you on the bike. Hold it right there.” Sometimes I miss the ever-present Jordanian cops in Amman. You didn’t want to cross them, certainly, but they were always amazed and amused to see bikers and were pleased to chat with you for as long as you wanted (this was probably because there are far too many officers in Jordan; one of the few jobs that native Jordanians can easily get). Madison cops, on the other hand, aren’t quite so overjoyed with bikers.

I didn’t have a sign or anything with me, but a union member was handing out signs as quickly as he could lay his gloved hands on them from a pile by his feet. He pressed one into my hands with a quick smile as I passed him on the sidewalk, a large white piece of heavy poster with “Wisconsin values Democracy at Work” printed on it in marker. The press of people on the sidewalk got too heavy to move at this point, and as we drew closer to the mouth of the State St intersection – the heart of the protest – I could make out the familiar sound of megaphones, stamping of feet, and sound of the rhythmic chants. Just like at a football game, when you have a crowd as large as the one we were quickly amassing, you can never seem to pull off a completely unified chant. It always ends up rolling across you like waves pounding along a beach; even if you manage to get everyone saying the same chant (good luck) you’ll still have at least a second or two of dissonance if you have a huge crowd. And we did. even half an hour before the protest was supposed to start. It was amazing.

The first day of Capitol protests saw a great turnout

By the time I’d been in the milling, chatting, chanting crowd for an hour, I’d manage to slowly work my way up to the railings and fences around the capitol building itself (not through the human masses shoulder-to-shoulder on the concrete paths, but by shortcutting through the snow-covered lawn instead). I pulled myself up onto the stone railing and finally was able to see just how many people had filled the sidewalks, the snowdrifts, and the streets around the capitol. Official estimates put Tuesday’s crowd at around 15,000-20,000 and I definitely agree with them. I had a perfect view as union-supporting church leaders, veterans, teachers, and healthcare professionals gave short speeches to the throng from a podium a dozen meters away from me, and was almost blasted off of my perch by the strong winter winds and the huge speakers blaring the anthem, “We’re Not Gonna Take it Anymore.”

Finally, at 1:00, the doors swung open on the capitol, rally workers politely instructed us to leave pointy wooden signs outside, and the final shout through the speakers was, “Go find your elected representatives and tell them how you feel!” After all, we’re not the illiterate clods of the Tea Party, et al – we’re the so-called Ivory Tower and we were going to politely and eloquently express our wishes and beliefs to our representatives!

In the middle of the capitol's rotunda

I figured that my new address in Madison would be pretty well covered by thousands of other people, and they’re all Democrats anyway. So instead I sought out Brodhead’s assemblyman, a newly-elected Republican named Evan Wynn from Whitewater. Back when I was living at my parents’ house, I remember seeing flyers from him in their mail before the election, pictures of him strapped in combat gear during his time in the Middle East and also looking business-like and concerned while staring at pieces of paper. When I finally fought my way through the hundreds of people all trying to do the same thing and find their own senators and assemblypeople, I found a quiet office with the new representative’s name on the door, and several older people with signs and green shirts bearing the word AFSCME, which I had never heard of before but rapidly learned was a large labor union, and they were public employees from UW-Whitewater. They were more than happy to have me join them in their pre-determined time slot to speak with Wynn, and after ten minutes of waiting for Wynn to finish up with a group of protesters already in his office, we were called in.

The representative was a short, white-haired little man with spectacles, and looked downright kindly and easy-going. I wasn’t sure to take that as a good sign or bad sign for our anti-bill cause; was he so relaxed because he knew he was on our side and therefore he expected an easy chat, or was he so relaxed because his political group controlled the entire political system of the state. We would find out. Out of respect for the AFSCME workers who had reserved the slot, I pulled up a chair in the corner and listened. The UW union members were part of the custodial service at their school, and specifically wanted to know what Wynn had to say about their bargaining rights being ripped out from under them.

I was impressed to see that Wynn was not stupid. He knew exactly who 9/10 of his group was (he had shaken all of our hands when we entered and asked us what we did and where we were from) and knew how to tailor his message. He started by talking about his support for modifying the bill to re-add bargaining rights for job conditions, but frowned expressively as he decried how professors could get away with having a doctorate, working two days a week, not knowing “how to actually teach students, instead of just lecture to them,” and then still cry foul over having bargaining “rights” taken away. The sanitation workers appeared mollified by this, while I shook my head in grudging respect for Wynn’s ability to bolster his current audience while targeting/scapegoating another group. So would Wynn then vote against the bill when the assembly took it up, they asked? He looked us each in the eye and said that if the bill were to appear in front of him in its current form, he would vote against it, and against his party, because of the lack of job condition bargaining rights. “However, you know that the bill will never reach the assembly in that form,” he warned us. “I agree with most of the bill, and Wisconsin is indeed out of money like the governor says. We need to increase the pension and benefit charges.” As we filed out of the room after talking for 20 minutes, I spoke to Wynn privately, and asked him to consider pro-rating the pension increase percentages, based on salaries, instead of a flat 5.8% increase across the entire public sector. He acknowledged that he “had never thought of it that way before,” before quickly bidding me farewell.

I returned a couple days later, this Thursday, with some coworkers of mine. I had arrived at work that morning in the Social Sciences building to find the vending machine and most of the walls covered with signs and posters asking students and workers to “skip class” and come to a rally at the Library Mall and march to the capitol. “Heh,” I chuckled to myself. I remembered our walk-out against the war to protest Halliburton back in 2007 and the (low)  turnout for that. Could students really be convinced to take action against something as nebulous as “workers rights”? With its “sinister” socialist connotations as putting “workers” and “rights” in the same sentence? Unfortunately, I didn’t expect that much would come from a “student walkout” for workers’ rights.

I was pleased to be very wrong. When the three of us arrived, the Mall was already crowded with students, and young people with megaphones were up on the concrete blocks near the bikes shouting and rallying the crowd. One of them was holding a sign that said “We Want More: 1) Workers Rights 2) Beer” Spirits were high (of the emotional variety, although the other type was probably present as well in some concealed flasks) as we marched up State Street to join the already-massive crowd at the capitol.

The problem with the students’ march, though, was the lack of diversity in the chants and shouts. Call me nostalgic for the old days, but we had dozens of antiwar chants back when I was an undergraduate. “Kill The Bill” was the most commonly shouted one in this march, and it was repeated ad nauseum every few minutes. I tried shouting “Negotiate and discuss the ramifications of passing this legislation and then vote against it, please” but few people joined in. Oh well, at least I tried.

This time, there was no speech-giving at the capitol steps; we all immediately jammed into the building and joined the crush of humanity surging through the building, bellowing, chanting, playing musical instruments, and generally making their wishes known. I recalled that Wynn had said that today would be the day that the senate would vote on the bill, and then afterwards, if it passed, Wynn and the rest of the assembly would see it. My coworkers and I climbed the steps up the second floor and made it to the beautiful lofted “bridge” near the rotunda looking over at the huge wrought-iron doors and the word “Senate” written in large golden letters. The people were of course thickest here, making an incredible amount of noise and breaking into a multitude of different chants and cheers every few minutes. We stayed there for twenty minutes or so before heading out to get some air again; as we walked around the capitol we started to hear snatches of excited rumors: the 14 Democrat senators had fled the state to Illinois and Iowa in order to prevent the doomed vote from taking place; with only 19 Republican senators left in the chamber, they didn’t have the quorum of 20 needed in order to carry out the vote.

Public Employees against the bill! I wrote "Down with Walker" in Arabic on my sign, but no one seems to get the reference without the word "Mubarak" in there. يسقط واكر!

As much as I still know that this current bill is doomed to pass, I still have hope. The longer that the Democrat senators can keep the vote from taking place, the more time we on the left have to mobilize against the senators who are acting on Walker’s behalf to pass this bill. Although we’re unfortunately stuck with Mr Walker for at least a year (we can attempt to recall him after one year in office and with 560,000 petition signatures) there are plenty of Republican senators that could be recalled right now, and it will only take a few dozen thousand signatures each to get voters a chance to oust them. One thing’s for sure: many Wisconsinites who voted for Walker because they were opposed to a commuter train between Milwaukee and Madison are now wishing they had known this would happen. It doesn’t really exonerate those voters; because Mr Walker made no secret of his wish to crush unions and workers’ rights before the election happened, but at least there’s some major buyer’s remorse going on. Eventually the bill will pass and we’ll be stuck with it (for a little while) – but at least we can prove that it will be political suicide for anyone who supports it, and in a few years time we can go back to being a blue state like we should be.

There’s no sign of the protests stopping yet, either, either here in Wisconsin or in the Middle East. My news aggregator, which has been searching for keywords of “Wisconsin” and “Middle East” started pulling up stories of assaults on protesters in Amman this morning, which was a shock to see. After reading the news on Tunisia, then Egypt, then Yemen, then finally Libya and Algeria – I didn’t think that Jordan would ever be on that list. King Abdullah II has never been as utterly adored as his father King Hussein, but he’s been an average, respected king for the Jordanian people and the thought of him paying off thugs to go and beat up protesters in the streets is nauseating. It reminds me that however bad we think we have it in America, with pay cuts of 5-6% and having to deal with right-wing crazies… protesters in my Arab second homeland have it far worse.

Rachel Maddow’s take on the Wisconsin protests. Sorry about the stupid advertisement that plays first; nothing I can do about that.

I wish I could say that I had been more punctual with this entry, but I wanted to specifically wait until I had permission from Nicholas to post these two Powerpoint files. A few days before I left for Egypt, Nicholas threw a special seminar detailing and describing his journey with the brave women and men journeying from Europe, America, and Turkey into the Occupied Territory. The people of York donated an ambulance, which you can see in several of the slides.

Without further ado, please take the time to download these two Powerpoint files, reproduced here with permission from Nicholas, his fellow travelers and hopefully the creator of the files (Stephen Shroud, judging by the name in the .pptx metadata). This first one is about 20 MB and serves as background information, and the second one is 25 MB and contains maps, excellent photography, and some soundclips from the trip. I only wish that I had some way of also reproducing Nicholas’ mesmerizing way of describing everything that he saw and experienced!

If you want more information on the Gaza Strip, and specifically Viva Palestina, please check out my friend Adriano’s website, The Sitch: Gaza Dispatches. He and used to be fellow college activists together in the Campus Antiwar Network, and he was part of Viva Palestina’s American contingent…way to go!

From the Introductory powerpoint

Ty drove me to the Memorial Union bus stop in the early afternoon on Monday and saw me off. I had already said farewell to my parents a few days ago; this actually marked the first time that they hadn’t been able to take me themselves. At the airport, I was worried that because of the aforementioned CrotchBomberMan that security might be different in the airport, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They did tell us to take all electronics out of our carry-on bags instead of just laptops (which meant I had to dig out my iPod, Game Boy, and external hard drive) but maybe that’s unrelated.

I spent the three hours waiting in the terminal watching “2010: The Year We Make Contact,” the lesser-known sequel to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” We had meant to watch it during our futuristic new year’s party, but had been too tired after the ball drop to do anything except fall asleep on Ty’s couches. Getting old, I guess. 23 and 24 year olds aren’t as young as they used to be.

Our airplane was named Prince Hashem bin Abdullah, after one of King Abdullah’s sons. I was directed to my requested window seat, which was exactly halfway along the plane. I even had a wall to my back so I looked forward to not getting pummeled in the spine for the next 14 hours. My seatmate was an unassuming Arab man who looked to be in his mid thirties. He didn’t speak English beyond a few words and sentences and seemed quite shy until we were in the air and I introduced myself in Arabic. He warmed up to me then and we chatted about Jordan, America, and our families.

As I knew that he would, he gave me his phone number and invited me to visit him and his family. I gave him mine as well, and as he slid the piece of paper into his wallet, I noticed his Jordanian driver’s license and commented on the military-issue cap he was wearing in the photograph. He was quiet for a moment, looked around at our sleeping co-fliers and told me that he was actually working with the military now, on security assignment to Royal Jordanian as one of the air marshals for the flight. He told me he’d been doing flight security for a couple years now, but as he showed me the photographs of his two young children on the digital camera he’d purchased in America, he told me with a smile that he was looking forward to being at the end of his tour and leaving the military so he could spend time with his family. Maybe I’ll become a farmer, he mused.

Throughout the rest of the flight, a few times I woke up suddenly and found that his seat was empty, or more oddly, inhabited by another man wearing a pinstriped suit who I groggily determined must be the other air marshal. However, my friend was sitting next to me as we started to come in for our landing in Amman. He calmly gazed past me out the window at the roaring dusty clouds and murmured “Bismillah” a few times – “In the name of God,” a common prayer. He noticed me looking at him and grinned, tapped his heart, pointed upwards and told me that God would keep us all safe. I told him that between him and God, I felt pretty safe indeed! He laughed at this, slapped me on the back, and got up to take his security seat at the front of the plane.

Jordanian men like to pose while shaking hands for some reason

Jeff picked me up from the airport and drove me back to Amman. We discussed all that’s been going on in Jordan in the past month – some pretty big stuff. Not only did King Abdullah dissolve the Parliament a few weeks ago, there’s now been heavy scrutiny put on the Mukhabarat, the Jordanian secret service, after a Jordanian suicide bomber detonated himself inside a C.I.A. outpost in Afghanistan. The bomber had been vouched and passed through security by an official in the Mukhabarat, and analysts think there’s probably going to be a little bit of a throwdown in the next few weeks here in Jordan over this.

The next day, I got right back to work at Whitman, feeling fresh as a daisy at 4:30 in the morning and filled with energy. Unfortunately, I crashed right about as I started teaching my second class at 2:30 in the afternoon, and unfortunately I think I’ve probably thrown off my entire schedule. After I got back from school, I almost instantly dropped off to sleep and awoke at about midnight. Since then, I’ve been puttering about in my room, enjoying uncommon stillness of this wonderful city (one of the few periods when the air isn’t punctuated by impatient car honking) and the ethereal Call to Prayer echoing through the silence.

Now it’s 5 AM, and I’m probably going to regret having given into my slumber yesterday afternoon when I teach again today. Ah well; looks like it’s going to be one of those coffee-powered days!

I use it a lot more now that I live in Jordan, however. The main reason for this is because for whatever reason, I can pretty much be guaranteed accurate, up-to-date imagery of Jordan and other Arab countries. Although Google didn’t have street names in Amman for my first five months in Jordan, they’ve added those since then – although their use is debatable since no person, be he taxi driver or King of Jordan, has any idea what 99% of the street names are in Amman. No one uses them, using major buildings or traffic circles as directional landmarks instead.

When I came back to Madison a couple weeks ago, I wanted to see if they’d updated the Google Earth map to reflect the fact that my venerable Ogg residence Hall was demolished a year ago and since then two entirely new dorms have been built in its place. Google Maps (as in the website) is less effective here because it only provides a copyright date, which is always just the current year. Google Earth, however, informed me right away that downtown Madison, at an elevation of around 7 kilometers, hasn’t been updated since late August 2004.

Madison, WI, USA: Last updated late August 2004

You can easily see the imagery date in every recent version of Google Earth, there in the lower left part of the screenshot I took. Compare that five and half year update span to this screenshot from Amman which I captured on the same evening.

Amman, Jordan: Last updated early July 2009

This picture is from mid July of 2009. Since I was already in the Middle East, I flew around to other large capitol cities from other Middle Eastern countries.

Beirut, Lebanon: Last updated late August 2009

Riyadth, Saudia: Last updated late May 2009

Tehran, Iran: Last updated late June 2009

Even more interesting, when I hovered over Baghdad, the former center of America’s “War on Terror” not even a date was displayed for the current photography. Using Google’s “previous imagery” function, I deduced that the last satellite photos that were given an official timestamp were from back in 2005. Out of the dozen searches I conducted, Baghdad was the only city that did not prominently display the date of its images in the lower left.

Baghdad, Iraq: Last updated...???

So, it’s obvious that there’s merely more satellites posed over the relatively small area of the Middle East compared with the vastly larger North American continent, right? And it should therefore stand to reason that they just happen to be taking more pictures of everyone under their cameras. Not necessarily. These Arab capitols I’ve just shown you weren’t the only ones I photographed. Below are the two major cities of Jordan’s next door neighbor, Israel.

Tel Aviv, Israel: Last updated early February 2006

Jerusalem, Palestine/Israel: last updated late November 2007

So, in the span of a few hundred kilometers, we have five capitols of Arab nations, that have all had their satellite imagery updated within the past year. However, easily within that same range, we have a country that is considered Jewish that has pictures that are many times older. Why are there no satellite images of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in the same time scale as the other cities? From the looks of the Arab pictures from May, June, July, and then August (and who knows for Baghdad) there was a definite system to these photography. Shouldn’t Israel be in there in, for example, April or September?

Taking these screenshots reminded me of my trip into Jerusalem a few months ago. Our Palestinian driver from the border pointed out a zeppelin that flew high above the center of town. He told us that it was a security blimp, positioned up there to be able to focus down at the Muslim mosques below with high resolution cameras. Supposedly, they carefully keep logs and records by name on every Muslim who enters the mosques, keeping special care to note how devout they are to their prayers and how frequently they attend. How very generous of Israel to take up that responsibility!

I’m not the first person to raise an eyebrow about Google’s satellite image-server policy. This article from the Arab News Blog questions the differences in resolution (clarity) of the images that are used over Iraq, Egypt, and Israel. In my own completely non-scientific article, I don’t speculate on resolutions and how easy it is to see various things in each city, but instead just how frequently things are updated. You can check all of this out yourself in Google Earth if you like; and if you don’t have it it’s free to download and useful for many more things than mere casual observations such as these!

So, my friends and colleagues in the Arab and Persian worlds, feel free to shoot a jaunty wave up to the beautiful blue skies above you (or grayish, if you’re in Cairo) because you can rest assured that you’re being watched and photographed – perhaps even a bit more than your neighbors. For your safety and convenience, of course.

The Apartheid Wall of Bethlehem

The little white taxi left the shining city of Jerusalem behind, and dove down through the dusty crags of the Palestinian Territories. It had only taken a moment for the Arab driver to get his passengers through the Israeli checkpoint on the edge of the city – he simply needed to mutter, “Shalom” to the impassive guard, jerk a thumb backward at his customers and say, “American.” Without moving a muscle in his face, the guard directed a second soldier to quickly glance through the car’s trunk, and then nodded. The gate ahead rose, and we had officially entered Palestine…or at least, what the Israelis have allowed the original Arab inhabitants to keep so far.

It was only a forty minutes to get from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and by this point the traveling of the past two weeks was sorely catching up with me. I nodded off a few times in the passengers seat of the taxi; all the weaves and curves lulling me to sleep before we’d go over one of the Arab world’s many speed bumps *WHAM* and I’d bounce awake again.

What are the West’s cultural and religious preconceptions about “Bethlehem”? I can’t speak for everyone, but as a child I thought of Bethlehem as a snowy, cold place that was just filled with hotels that all happened to be full whenever unfortunate pregnant women happened by. It’s impossible for a Christian to even think of the name without acknowledging the nativity, the shepherds, the Wise Men, and the whole set of wooden/plastic/ceramic figurines that they have somewhere in their house at the moment.

In the early 21st century, Bethlehem is…another Arab town in occupied Palestine. The name, when you break it down, is “Bayt Lehem” which is either “House of Bread” in Hebrew or “House of Meat” in Arabic. For me, it was like being in Irbid or in Eastern Amman…the same types of shops, quiet alleys, and people that I’ve come to know, trust, and befriend. I felt right at home again after the shoulder-rubbing tourism of Jerusalem. Our driver had no idea what I was talking about when I said “Rachel’s Tomb” but figured it out pretty quick when I said “Muqubar Raheel.” What I didn’t realize is that Rachel’s Tomb now sits behind the massive concrete walls that have become quite common has “protection” for Israel over the past decade. The driver took us to the edge of the wall, then asked a nearby gas station attendant for help. I cut in quickly and asked the attendant where the Bethlehem Bible College, al-Jamyeh al-Kitab Muqudas. It turned out we were only a minute away from it further down the street, and yes, thankfully…there was room at the inn. *cymbal crash*

My parents were feeling as tired as I was from all of the travel we’d been doing, but I was intrigued by the close proximity of the infamous wall that I’d heard of for years, and although it was nearly sunset, I retraced our path back to that gas station and the flickering, eerie green glow of the security lamps on the top of the wall high overhead. A thin, middle-aged man was walking nearby with a bag of groceries, shoulders slumped and head downcast. He glanced at me and my camera, and at the wall, but didn’t stop. He walked carefully and slowly along the gravel boundary of the wall, and vanished from sight around the corner.

I remembered why I joined the Campus Antiwar Network as I stood there with my camera, and I remembered why I wanted to come to the Middle East to work. There are so many injustices in this world, big and small, and although I was just one man with one camera and a blog, I was happy to have the honor to record the artful graffiti that other activists had left before me. It was easy for me to rage against the war, against Imperialism, while I was safe in America. But I know that over here, things are different. Protest doesn’t work the same way. There are brave men and women who come from the West specifically to fight against the Israeli oppressors, but I knew that now wasn’t the time for me to get tear-gassed and pelted with rubber bullets for doing something rash and impulsive.

Instead, I put my hands against the pitted, blasted gray pseudostone, bowed my head, and prayed. I don’t pray often; I usually feel uncomfortable doing it alone or without a pastor’s instruction. But here, in front of this monolith that for me represented sixty years of strife between two peoples that felt like the land we were standing on was their own, I simply asked Jesus to help his homeland out with wisdom, patience, and the ability to stop shouting and throwing things and just talk again…or at least to start out with his hometown. After a minute, I rose and walked back to the Bible College.

After enjoying an excellent breakfast from our British hosts, my parents and I struck out early the next morning to find the Church of the Nativity. Bethlehem isn’t a big city, so after wandering a little bit and staring at the College-provided map (“Is this called Yasser Arafat Street or Children’s Street?”) for a few minutes, we got our bearings for the cutely-named “Star Street” and headed south.

Oh hey, it IS Yasser Arafat Street. Apparently the map was made to be slightly more PC than the street signs were.

It was early Monday morning and we were unmolested by vendors, who were probably still in bed at this point. After a 20 minute hike up a hill going south, we came to a large, but quiet souq market that would almost certainly be packed with souvenir vendors in a few short hours. Just beyond that was the dark, squat shape of the Church of the Nativity with its dark, tiny door that required you to squat in order to enter it…it all makes sense, somehow.

Besides being the birthplace of God Incarnate, the Church happens to be one of the oldest Christian churches in the world, namely because it escaped the much of the destruction wrought by conquerors by the incredibly lucky chance that the people who conquered it first were Persians. According to my mother’s guidebook, the squatting-generals of the Persian army looked up and saw the famous “Nativity” style painting that an artist had painted on the ceiling. They didn’t understand what they were seeing, but they recognized the garb of the 3 Wise Men as Persian…and decided to spare the church as a sign of respect. Or superstition, at least. So far, the oldest churches in the world, such as the Hagia Sofia in Turkey, the Apostolic Church in Armenia, and this one, were all built around the 3rd century. However, there may be an even more ancient one closer to home…

One thing that these ancient churches have is smoke damage. Those censors that the Catholic and Orthodox priests are fond of waving produce smoke – a lot of it. Which, over centuries, tends to built up to thick, ugly black coatings all over the walls and ceilings. In the first main alcove that would have contained that aforementioned lucky painting, the pillars were all blackened, and that painting was long since destroyed by the foulness of the air. In the very back of the church, accessible by a small set of stairs, the humble birthplace of Jesus is revealed, also entirely blackened by smoke. Historians are more likely to say these days that Mary and Joseph actually stayed that night in a cave, but western perceptions of a stable has resulted in popular portrayl of the nativity as being in a wooden, freestanding structure. This little room, carved from rock, small, and bare, was glorious in its simplicity, only slightly marred by the some denomination’s need to put a silver star in place to mark the exact place where the actual birth occurred.

Come on, folks; enough with the "exact" religious locations. Do you really think that Mary pulled out her GPS and added a geotag in the middle of labor?

As we examined the smokey painted interpretations of the nativity throughout the centuries, we kept company with a group of Italian Catholics who were holding a church service at a small alter near the birthplace. Their priest was speaking exclusively in Latin, but it was great when they all started singing a Latin hymn all together. It sounds hokey to say it, but it was a magical experience. I bought some Bethlehem-made Christmas tree ornaments, made from local olive tree. It was a great day.

We didn’t linger much more around the city, as we had reservations to keep back in Jordan and that dreaded border to cross back over one more time. We took the long way back to the Bible College; I think my parents were feeling a little sad because they knew that they were returning to America in just a few more days and wanted to see as much as they could. For me, it was just another Arab town with the same style of everything in Amman…but it just meant that I felt comfortable at home walking around and chatting with anyone who didn’t look like he was going to attempt to sell me fake Italian purses.

Utilizing our friendly contacts one last time at the Bible College (I can’t recommend that place highly enough) we got an extremely inexpensive taxi ride back to the border from a muscular young Arab Christian man named Issa (the Arabic word for Jesus). He was a loud, friendly man about my age who wore a tight muscle shirt with a huge gold cross swinging from his necklace. As an Arab, he explained to us that he was going to take us on “a small detour” in order to avoid the problems that the Israelis might give him. As we whipped around mountain corners at speeds approaching 100 km/h, my mother eventually stopped making strangled noises in her throat whenever it looked like an oncoming semi truck was about to shove us off the side of the cliff.

We bid the friendly Issa farewell at the edge of the security barrier (please ask me his phone number if you’re making journeys around the area; I highly recommend him) and met a decidedly less friendly Arab who would carry us the last 7 kilometers to the border and security station. He charged us $30 for that five minute ride, which had me fuming quietly…but of course there was nothing I could do about it. He was the only guy at the barrier, and Issa didn’t have a license to go any further. What else could we do but pay $6 a minute?

It wouldn’t be the last time we’d be ripped off in Israel. After our bags were unceremoniously hauled away from us again for (more) scanning, the bland Israeli child soldier-secretary girl informed us that the Allenby border crossing charged a $40 exit tax. Per person, ending up being $120 for the three of us. Once again, there was nothing that we could do (although I was tempted to shake her briskly by the beige polo shirt collar and tell her that our taxes paid her salary), and we waited for the bus that would return us to Jordan in silence, contemplating what we’d seen over the past 3 days. For my family, it really was a once-in-a-lifetime thing; the chances of them returning to the Holy Land are small. For me, I was already writing these past two blog entries in my head, thinking of what I’d seen and how it matched the years of news articles I’d read about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

The next time I enter Palestine/Israel, I’ll have a camera in my hand again…but will it be as a tourist, or as a activist to help, for example, the people of Bil’in repel the constant Israeli settlers’ attacks? Only time will tell.

The famous view overlooking the Old City from Mount Olives. Foreground is the Jewish cemetery, with the Al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock behind.

One of the highlights of my parents’ trip to the Middle East was to be the Dozan wa Awtar choir trip to the Holy Land, Palestine, to see Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and Bethlehem – all important and famous historical Christian sites. The culmination of it would be singing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which encloses what remains of the Hill of Golgotha and Jesus’ burial site. The whole tour would be paid for and tour buses would ferry us around the various other sites. Board would be free for choir members, and families (such as mine own and several other interested parties) would be get excellent discounted rates on 5-star hotel rooms. We would sing “Al-Zahara al-Madaa’en” (The Flower of the Cities), which was written about Jerusalem, in Jerusalem. It would be amazing.

Then the whole thing was canceled, the day beforehand. “What could happen, after all that planning, practicing, and scheduling!” you may ask. Israel happened, of course! Our favorite people across the river decided to throw an extra dozen papers and forms at the Jordanian and Diplomatic Visa-holders in the choir group, and there was no way to get it all done in time before we were scheduled to leave. So the whole thing had to be scrapped thanks to the wonderful, lovely Israeli government. Thanks, chaps – right kind of you. PS: I hope you enjoy never being able to leave your own country because your passports have the same appeal as the Black Plague to the rest of the world.

Slight bitterness aside, we decided that just because Israel security was less than intelligent, we weren’t going to be stopped from having a fun vacation in Palestine. The Tulip family (frequent commenters on this blog) felt the same way, and together the two families took one extra day of rest to replan an entire trip and left early on Friday morning, the second of October. Considering that she was only given one day of warning, my mother pulled things together in her typical excellent way. With almost inconceivable foresight to this cancellation, she had even brought a “Guide to Israel” guidebook with her and we spent Thursday (the day we were supposed to have left) figuring out where we would stay and what we would do.

The ride to the border was simple and wonderfully inexpensive (cue ominous foreshadowing) at only 12 JD for the ride to the border, and then another 3JD for the specially-licensed servecee taxi to take us the last bit of the way. Because of (guess) more border security (you guessed it), any taxi or public transport you take has to stop about a kilometer away from the border and then you need to switch into what is essentially an identically beat-up, banged up bus or taxi, and pay more money to go the last 3 minutes. Oh well, like I said – at least it was cheap.

The bouncy transport systems weren’t finished. It took another trip for the three of us by a large tourist bus (JD15 I believe, including our baggage fees) to actually cross over the Jordan Puddle (no way I’m calling that dribble a river), now joined by the Tulips. On the other side of the river, things changed very noticably and very quickly.

Our bus swung to a wheezing halt in front of a low, squat building…the Israeli border security and clearance center. Notices written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English were posted everywhere, something along the lines of “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Standing there to “greet” us as we exited the bus was a tall Israeli boy who rather resembled a curly-headed brick wall. Holding a loaded M-16 machine gun. And wearing khaki shorts, polo short, shades, and a (poorly) hidden mic under his shirt on the left shoulder, which he gripped self-importantly every few moments and muttered Hebrew into it. I say “boy” because he was just the first of many Israeli “soldiers” all over the base which looked as if they were either ready for spring break in Cancun (like this guy) or were wearing their dad’s baggy soldier uniform. Speaking of which, this gentleman was maybe one of five males I saw during the entire 1.5 hour stay in the base. The vast majority of soldiers were young women who looked as if they should be talking about their latest boyfriend and arguing about senior prom, instead of wearing pistols strapped to their belts and glaring suspiciously at my Tajiki and Uzbeki visas in my passport. The girl who questioned me stared at them in confusion, having probably never before seen those two large stickers that take up an entire passport page. “What were you doing there, and why? Who were you staying with and how did you know them? What was their family name?” was an example of some of the questions that were fired at me. My mother elbowed me and told me to mention that their daughter stayed with the family in America and the father works at the U.S. Embassy. Even so, the girl took my passport to an office a few meters away and vanished for several minutes. I can only imagine how that conversation went.

• Girl: Quick, boss – where’s Tajikistan? And do they hate us too?
• Bored office guy: Next to India or something. Naw, I guess they’re cool.

After being fingerprinted and photographed by another soldier, plus one final cattle-herd like line of people shuffling forward to get their Israeli-scanned luggage, which had already been scanned twice before, we were through. Abu Tulip arranged a microbus for all of us and using his fluent Arabic, negotiated what west of the river may call a “fair price” and what we east of the river would call “a little bit steep.” No problem, though – with three young children in the Tulip family, the main order of business was getting us to Jerusalem and to some lunch!

Dad said up near the front seat and chatted with the driver, who spoke a little English and was happy to talk. Like myself, dad had been forced to put the filming and photographing devices away for the last few hours as we were in “security” territory, but now that we were free of the border region and moving westward, he quickly dug out his camcorder and fired it up, just in time to catch The Separation Wall up on the hill above us.

It was the first time I’d ever seen it in anything but pictures and online videos, and even though we were quite far away from it, it still struck me with its sense of foreboding, segregation, and loss. In this particular area, the wall wasn’t so much a separate, free-standing entity but more of a component of the luxurious-looking Israeli apartments built above it. All the land we had been driving through since leaving the border was technically Palestinian (remember, this means nothing as Israel occupies it all anyway) and these high walls were built facing the desert to keep everyone else out, but at the same time provide apartment inhabitants with a beautiful view of the desert and the Jordan Valley behind us. I can’t look at these gashes of separation without wondering what might have been there over the past few hundred years. An olive farm? A village? Israelis touts themselves as being a beacon of modernity, an oasis in a land surrounded by desert and despotic rulers – I’ve actually seen comments with those phrases used in pro-Israel blogs and forums before. But these walls, separating the modern apartments, parks, libraries, and swimming pools from the desert sands, only serve to fill my stomach with a feeling of dread and nausea.

Houses on stilts: necessary for protection or just to remind Arabs that they aren't welcome within?

For that reason, I’m glad that we spent almost the entire duration of our time in Jerusalem in the beautiful Old City section, the historical treasure of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian history. We left our driver behind near the “New Gate” of the Old City (so named for being “only” one hundred years old, as opposed to thousands) and quickly found our hotel, the Knights’ Palace between the New Gate and the large and famous Jaffa Gate. We only took the time to drop off our well-scanned luggage in the hotel room, taking but a moment to admire the medieval suits of armor and paintings of Crusaders that hung in the wide stone hallways. Apparently the building had once been a theological seminary, but these days they merely harbor an odd love of Henry Kissinger in a knight costume (This amusing painting was hanging right next to our stairway).

Because we were on the edge of the Christian Quarter of the old city (populated with Arab families that had been Christians before Europeans had ever set foot on North America) the Tulips and I had no difficulties chatting with the native Palestinians to find a restaurant and begin our touring. It was already early afternoon by now, but we pushed on deeper into the Old City, passing by what seemed like approximately every souvenir vendor in the entire Arab World in our passage. Although I didn’t know it at the time (I had no clue where I was accept for “in Jerusalem’s Old City”) I found out that this was one of the numerous branching alleyways-turned streets that led off the famous Vie Delarosa, or the “Walk of Agony” which Jesus dragged his cross upon on his way to Golgotha and his death. You wouldn’t know it these days for the literally hundreds of tiny stalls and shops each hawking “gifts from the Holy Land.”

The buildings here were tall, slanted, and shaded, and at times I felt like we were descending down a long, dimly lit tunnel. It wasn’t an actual enclosed market like in Damascus or Istanbul, but seemed close. After a few wrong turns we found what seemed like the “back alley” entrance to the entrance yard in front of the Church of the Sepulcher, arguably the most famous Christian site in all of the Holy City. This massive church contains both the remains of the hill of Golgotha where Jesus was crucified, and (possibly) the remains of the tomb that he was buried and subsequently resurrected. (A side note: Protestants are technically supposed to believe in the validity of a second tomb instead, but I decided to let it slide here.)The eight of us spent a good couple hours in here; there was quite a lot of sites to see, although you wouldn’t have known it from the main entrance.

Looking at it from here, I muttered 'is this it?' to myself. I was quite wrong. (Note the ladder under the right window: due to arguments between the guardian sects, it's been unmoved for over a century.)

I’ll come right out and say it: I suppose I’m rather a philistine (unfortunate pun intended) when it comes to the Catholic and Orthodox idea of religious decoration. I love the paintings and the artwork, don’t get me wrong. But I find the idea of literally coating the entire peak of Golgotha with silver and putting up silver idols of Mary, Mary M, and Jesus everywhere just struck me as unnecessary. Coming from the stoic Lutheran Protestant background in the Midwest, I’m used to places of worship that are done in wood and velvet, and maybe some fine polished marble. But statues, silver, and hanging incense burners knocking me in my unfortunately-tall head just doesn’t make me think of a holy place of worship. It makes me think “Gift Shop.” I mean no offense to my Catholic/Orthodox readers, if you’re out there – this is just my opinion that Jesus, as a humble carpenter and man who preached the idea of leaving everything behind to follow God, might not necessarily take coating everything in precious metals and incense as the highest compliment.

On the other hand, I’ll easily report that the church is beautiful from top to bottom as an example of medieval architecture. Every wall is a huge craggy stone face coated in fine linens, paintings, or mosaics, although there’s often so many tourists in the building that it’s difficult to get a quiet moment of reflection by yourself. Just inside the door, we watched a group of Europeans gently caress a large, flat, pinkish-colored stone set heavily into the floor with several censors swinging gently above it with the breeze from the door. Many of the people rubbed a sweater or other cloth on this, the Stone of Unction that Jesus was supposedly bandaged and perfumed upon, trying to suck up the “sanctity” of the stone, or something. Nearby was the aforementioned Golgotha hill itself, almost entirely unrecognizable as a hill due to the massive blocks of ancient stone that had been set around it to form a vault that people could walk upon. After climbing some well-worn stairs to the top, we joined a throng of other tourists to witness the silvery forms of Jesus and the female saints.

Not my idea of the best way to represent Christ's death, but beautiful regardless

Although this picture below is blurry, it captures the idea of trying to become as close to these sacred objects as possible…I watched several men and women crawl under this low table, to a small disk placed on the floor that is marked as being the actual exact hole that the True Cross had rested in. People kissed the spot, placed their hands upon it to pray a moment, then crawled out again.

Watch your Head

We didn’t have time to wait in line to get into the actual Edicule (tomb) of Jesus itself; the line there would have taken an hour to see. The large dark rotunda hung above us, designed to send a single shaft of dusty light straight down upon the top of the tomb. Although scholars generally agree that Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb was embedded into the side of a hill or mountain, nothing remains of that original mountain now – the mountain was torn down – carefully – so that this stone crypt could be erected around the theoretical exact site that the Catholics and Orthodox believe that Jesus was lain. Although the vast majority of the light in the large chamber came from that single sunbeam, hundreds of small prayer candles were embedded into the walls of the Edicule, flickering, dancing, and slowly building a waxy second wall. The line to enter wound around the crypt itself towards a massive, ornately decorated front door and wall, with massive capped candles taller than two men and even more censors.

I wonder how long one of those candles lasts from start to end? For that matter, how often are they lit?

Dad and I happened to be near this door snapping pictures of the Cathlicon inner chapel (the central room of the church) when suddenly monks in flowing brown robes hustled all the tourists out of the way for the daily reading of the Divine Liturgy (Orthodox) or Holy Mass (Catholic) – I couldn’t tell which, sadly, as I speak neither Latin nor Aramaic. Coming around the corner, the chanting moan of a dozen men in robes bore down on us with candles and hymnals. They knelt as one before the golden door of the Edicule and sang beautifully in one of the aforementioned languages, stopping every few moments as the man closest to me, a gray-bearded, bespectacled scholar called out an interjection in a wispy voice between each line: they may have been singing a psalm.

The sun was just about to set as we left the Holy Sepulcher, and we began heading West to reach, naturally enough, the Western Wall. We knew that we were getting close when suddenly the Arab vendors around us melted away, revealing dark, barren stone walls for a few blocks, interspersed with a few soldiers (in uniform this time, but just as young-looking) with machine guns keeping quiet watch on the alleyways. As we walked further, a new kind of people started bustling around us, paying no attention to our knot of foreigners. We had (invisibly) crossed into the Jewish Quarter and were surrounded by men in solemn suits with long beards, tiny round glasses, and hats that looked like furry doughnuts. I didn’t speak with any of these conservative, religious Jews during my time in Palestine/Israel, and actually was under the impression that I was seeing specially-trimmed hair, which meant I had to refrain from giggling uncontrollably like a buffoon whenever we passed one of these gentlemen.

After passing through a security checkpoint and a long tunnel, we emerged into the courtyard next to the Western/Wailing Wall, which was packed with Jews of all types. Photography was forbidden as it was the Sabbath (it was still Friday, but since the sun had set the Jewish law declared the Sabbath had begun) and also a religious festival. We lingered in the back and watched the sea of people, dressed often entirely in black or at least in dark, somber colors. It seemed like you could rank devout-ness by proximity to the wall: near the front, practically clinging to the wall were bearded rabbi muttering and rocking hypnotically back and forth. Near us, however, were knots of younger people I can only assume were foreigners, as they were only wearing a small head cover pinned into place and they were speaking American-accented English. Continuing my assumption, they may have been on the free “Taglit-Birthright” pilgrimage from America and here for the Jewish holiday. There were several curly-haired men, about my age, next to me in khakis who were speaking with a Bostonian accent about the (copious amounts of) beer they were going to drink later in the evening. We moved on, and after a leisurely night walk along the southern edge of the Old City’s wall, retired for the night.

We had a comfortably uneventful evening, relaxing on our three twin-sized beds in a room that opened onto the Knights Palace’s dining courtyard. The Tulips and us dined together the following morning before starting out for the morning’s hike up Mount Zion on the southern edge of town. We had walked past it the previous night, but hadn’t been able to see the large spire of the Church of the Dormition in the darkness. Stroller in hand for the youngest Tulip, we headed up the smooth road to the summit, where there were three attractions to greet us: the room that had contained the apostles’ Last Supper, the Church of the Dormition devoted to the “sleeping” mother of Mary, and one of the most important Jewish holy sites, the tomb of the great King David. In this case, the “last” were indeed first and we entered the shrine of the tomb, another site that had forbidden the usage of cameras indoors on the Saturday,  the Jewish Sabbath.

At first I thought that we might have the place to ourselves because our footsteps echoed alone on the cobblestone inside the shrine surrounding the tomb, but near to the entrance of the actual tomb itself, we came across another group of European tourists. Just like at the Western Wall, the genders were required to separate down two separate corridors. All men were required to either put on the hats we’d brought with us, or select cute little paper kippah hats to balance precariously on our noggins. Abu Tulip and his sons came with dad and I and Abu carefully tried to keep the boys from knocking their kippah off their heads in their general interest and exploratory behavior. The Europeans crowded around us in the doorway of a small chamber directly adjacent to the tomb itself and started snapping pictures, taking no heed to the signs all around that requested that no cameras be used on the Sabbath. The chamber was filled with rabbis and scholars rocking and studying, whispering to themselves as they fingered beads and paged through the Torah. A grizzled looking scholar glanced sharply up as flashes started bouncing about his group and growled in English, “What’s the matter with you? Have some respect!” and the tourists sheepishly (albeit reluctantly) sheathed their weaponry.

We couldn’t enter the tomb itself, but Um Tulip and mom dryly pointed out that the men probably had a better view than they did. From the studying chamber, the men would peer through a barred door at the tomb, which was decked with a cloth and flowers. I recognized the Hebrew word for David (דוד)easily enough. Ahead and to our left, I could see a curtain drawn were presumably the women were looking at approximately a quarter meter of the tomb and David’s feet visible before the curtain began, and that was about all they could see. As we left the tomb, Abu Tulip had his boys doff their little kippah at the door, although the eldest one looked as if he might want to keep it a little more!

Next, we briefly viewed the large, airy room on the same site of the “Upper Room, where Jesus had the Last Supper with his disciples before being betrayed. Ironically enough, it had been converted into a mosque sometime over the centuries during the Islamic control of the city; the Muslims hadn’t been concerned about its Christian significance but revered the mighty Prophet Dawud (David) that the Qur’an mentioned was buried nearby. The room had a large mihreb niche in the wall facing Mecca that had almost completely blocked and hidden the stained-glass windows behind it.

The Church of the Dormition is named for Mary, mother of Jesus who Catholics believe never died, but instead was also taken (alive) into heaven by way of ascension like her son. Most striking in the main chapel area, which is surrounded by a dozen beautiful mosaics, all perfectly illuminated to sparkle iridescently with the semi-precious metals that were used in their creation. Directly below the chapel in a circular, crypt-like area is a reclining statue of Mary in white marble, carved as if she was asleep. This location is speculated to be where she was ascended into heaven.

High(er) resolution shot of my favorite mosaic - click it for bigger version

After lunch at a little Armenian restaurant in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City, we hired a rental van to take our group up the tiny winding road leading to the summit of the Mount of Olives, where I took the picture from the top of this post. The Arab driver manuevered perfectly along the walled road, often with little more than centimeters of clearance on either side. For example, there were two female tourists climbing up the road, who leapt fearfully out of the way and pressed themselves against the wall as the van drew nearer. The driver slowed to a crawl and crept passed them – as he did so, he opened his window, grinned at them, and said “Don’t worry.” Although we didn’t go all the way to the very peak of the mountain to the site of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, we got a great view and photographs from halfway up, and were also able to stop at a chapel that contained a mosaic of the Holy Chicken.

The 13th, and lesser-known disciple was renown for his unusually plump thighs.

The final stop on the Mount of Olives was the location of the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus went through fear and agony so intense that he “sweat blood.” The Garden is overlooked by a group of centuries-old olive trees that symbolically represent the original trees that were witness to Jesus’ suffering as he knelt in prayer over a rock to ask God to spare him if possible. The rock was provided, too.

I think that the Garden is one the Christian Church's favorite places, because it's here that you acutely feel Jesus' humanity through his sadness and fear

As the rest of the group was returning to the hotel in the van, I elected to leave them behind at the foot of the Mount of Olives and walk back along the Via Dolorosa. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going, but dad gave me his camera and told me to take as many pictures as possible. I wandered up the eastern side of Mount Moriah (which is the technical name of the Temple Mount), and found myself in a sad, weed-covered cemetery, littered with soda bottles and detritus. This is all that remained of Islamic cemetery, the religious parallel of the immaculate Jewish tombs across the valley. The place looked sadly forgotten, but I walked along a north-traveling path through the broken gravestones in the shadow of the Eastern Wall of the temple for 20 minutes until I reached the Lion Gate, where the Via enters the Old City between the temple and the Muslim Quarter. The sun was close to setting, and I was surrounded again by the familiar echoing roar of the Call to Prayer that follows you wherever there’s a mosque. The streets were mostly quiet, as many Muslims were in prayer at the time, but wherever I looked there were Israeli soldiers bearing machine guns and dark glasses watching the vendors and tourists, always in twos, leaning against the walls conversing quietly with as their hands rested on the barrels. I saw about 5 of these pairs along the 20 minute walk along the Via.

On the final day in Jerusalem, my parents and I separated from the Tulips to visit the Archaeological Park to the south of the Al-Aqsa mosque. As it was now Sunday, the no-photography rules of the Sabbath were no longer in effect and I was able to capture the separation “curtain” between the praying men and women at the Western Wall. Only a few minutes walk beyond the praying Jews was the entrance to the ruins, where an Umayyad Palace is slowly being recovered from the mounded stones. If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s because the Umayyad sect also has palatial ruins in Amman that I’ve wrote about previously. As the three of us perused the ruins, wishing that there were more signs with descriptions of what we were seeing, I noted that there was a large pit pressed right up against the Temple Mount’s wall. This pit descended a good further 20 meters below the ground, and I was shocked and impressed to see that the wall continued further down without any sign of stopping, vanishing into the darkness below. It made me wonder how high these walls really were when they were originally constructed. This was also apparently a place for Jews to have some quiet privacy near the holy wall, as the cracks and creases here were also filled with the messages and prayers left by patrons. Unlike the busy chaos only 50 meters from us further north, this area was comparably quiet and peaceful; a good place for prayer or meditation.

It was amazing how resourcefully the tiny scraps of paper were tucked into even the smallest of cracks

It was about at this point that we started hearing sirens and the distant sounds of a commotion. We had planned to enter the Temple Mount early that morning before visiting the archaeological site, but had been stopped by a dreadlocked Israeli soldier who ordered us to get back from the entrance because, as he told me, “the Muslims are causing problems. This is OUR holiday, our holy festival, and they have to go and ruin everything.” This article took place as we were only a few hundred meters from the attacks. We stood up on the rampart’s of the Old City’s southernmost wall and watched as police cars pulled up and started scanning under passing vehicles for explosives.

As tensions seemed to mount in the city, we decided it was time to utilize the Knights Palace’s connections with a local taxi company, and move out of “Israel” into the wild, unsecured deserts of the Palestinian Territories to our next location – Bethlehem. We hoped that we weren’t going out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The Campus Antiwar Network, the student activism group that started me along this path over two and a half years ago is still going strong in the USA. I’m still on their email lists and I enjoy reading about their protests, planning, and conferences to rally student enthusiasm behind a full troop withdrawal and authentic democratic elections in Iraq, and a full Israeli withdrawal into the pre-1967 borders defined by the United Nations. I’m pretty sure if anyone actually paid attention to anything the United Nations commanded, at least half of their ambassadors would suffer heart attacks from shock.

Some of my friends from CAN are over in Palestine right now, working in the West Bank with the ISM, International Solidarity Movement. Here’s their website, Feta Cheese and Falafel. There’s been some amazing videos and stories coming from the small group of dedicated international workers there, and I encourage you to check them out, and leave some words of encouragement on their blog.

The utter depravity of Israeli soldiers who teargas peaceful protesters, throw percussion grenades at them, arrest them without warrant or reason, and drench them with some possibly nerve-damaging “non-fatal” weaponry called “Skunk” is being brought ever closer to home for me. This is happening less than 150 kilometers from my house now. What can I do when my colleagues are fighting for the rights of people like my students? I can’t just sit here any longer.

In a couple more weeks, after I finish my final class teaching here in Ayn al Basha, I am planning on joining them over there for a couple weeks in early August, to document, to protest, and to cut down some barbed-wire fences. If all goes as planned, I should be able to join my friends for a week in early August.The more media we can push in the faces of the bored and apathetic American public, the better the chance that we will slowly but surely cut down the barbed fences of Israel’s terrorism against their Arab cohabitants.

“Occupation is a Crime, from Iraq to Palestine!” Time to dust off my old chants and start practicing again. It’s been a year, but an activist only goes dormant for awhile; he never stops activizing.

Update: Due to unforeseen travel related circumstances, I’m unable to join my comrades in Palestine. However, I’ll be praying for them and their safety, and I encourage you to check out their website and share with your friends. We need more people like them to spread the truth of Israel’s bloodthirsty depravity.

On the map above: the purple line represents the actual route we took to get to Khorog. “1″ represents the approximate location of the There Will Be Mud article, “2″ is the location of Qala-i-Khumb, “3″ is the approximate location of the “Forty Bodies Teahouse,” and “4″ is the approximate location of the Hot Springs (Garm ChashMA!). The orange line is the approximate route that we used to get into Uzbekistan.

It’s a been a week now since I returned from my Central Asian vacation, and it’s time for me to stop backdating my entries and set the clock on the blog properly. I’ve been doing some rereading and poring over my old travel entries from my time in Britain in summer 2007, and noticed that they were all much shorter, and without pictures. That probably explains why I was able to easily keep up with day-to-day activity then – in the time since then, my blog has just had its second birthday, and my family and friends’ expectations for my blog has increased. It’s a photography-based internet out there, and 500-600 words of text just won’t cut it anymore.

Besides that, I felt like I had an honor and a duty to uphold to Tajikistan. As the previous blog entry mentions, I’m now an unofficial “Son of Tajikistan” and I want to make sure that this small, proud, and beautiful country gets the recognition that it deserves on the national scope. There are so many opportunities for business and tourism waiting in those mountains and forests; all it needs is a financially-responsible guiding hand a government that embodies the wishes of the people – progress, health, education, and technology. It’s my pleasure to write these copious blog entries in the hopes that readers searching for more information on Tajikistan in particular, or Central Asia in general, can receive an in-depth picture of the area. This means I tried to make my writing honest to my opinions on the country: strong, beautiful people with a fervent wish for progress in their new country, but a corrupt and ineffective executive government that takes the worst aspects of Communism and Capitalism and twists them into a beast in which change and hope die in their infancy.

Speaking of me being a “Son of Tajikistan” – below is a scan from Farahnush of the newspaper article they wrote about me. Of course I’m unable to read it but apparently it was entirely unchanged from what I said – the good and the bad alike. I can’t believe they wrote so much about me, and at the bottom of the second page (which is located here) I’m told it says “to be continued,” I guess they really liked what I had to say.

Ман фарзанди ТоҶикистонам: I am a Son of Tajikistan

And, you know, this is happening all over the world. Dozens of countries around the globe suffer daily with outrages and injustice, media suppression, taxation, and emigration snafu. Certainly, Tajikistan isn’t in the same league of difficulties as Palestine, Iraq, the Congo, Darfur, or North Korea, to name a few. But therein lies the problem. A good dictator like President Emomalii Rahmon knows that the key to a successful power consolidation is to be low-key and non-expansive. As long as he doesn’t try to overstep his boundaries of the little country, he can get away with essentially anything he likes and the International Community will overlook it, remaining more concerned with other things. I didn’t speak with a single citizen of Tajikistan who felt that their president had their best interests in mind, or that Tajikistan was seeing the post-Communism changes that it deserves. But most remain hopeful that their future could get brighter if governmental changes were made – not just in Tajikistan, but in many of the former-Soviet countries. For example, President Rahmon has been able to remain in power indefinitely so far thanks to his modification of the constitution that allows him to run, and rerun. He imprisons or exiles political competition when it appears. Such things are apparently so common to the jaded eyes of the United Nations that this isn’t even worth investigating. Yet here the United States is, continuously pouring money into a war into a war in Iraq that Obama cannot control (his military staff says one thing to him, then under their breath says another) and working as Israel’s lapdog to fund a slow but steady genocide against the people of Palestine. Your tax dollars at work. If a large percentage  of that was put not into war, occupation, and weaponry but instead research, unbiased news, foreign aid, and diplomats to help Tajikistan and all the others like it, I think a lot more people could sleep more soundly at night. Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox – for now.

So what are some of the differences, similarities, and things that surprised me in Tajikistan?

• The offensive gesture. Farahnush had informed me of this last year when she was in America, but I needed to be continuously reminded of it while in Tajikistan to make sure I wasn’t going to accidentally give someone The Bird (equivalent). Too often I found my hands just naturally did this as I was reading or focusing on something else. The problem is that the offensive gesture in Tajikistan looks a lot like the game we play with children in the USA….Got your nose!
  

  Whatchu say 'bout my mother?!

• The hospitality. Living in Jordan means that I’m always being asked to come over and have dinner or tea with friends, coworkers, and random people who see me on the street. If I had come to Tajikistan straight from America, I might have found highly hospitable, pleasant Tajiks much more different, but instead I’m starting to now see instead that the USA and the Western World in general just isn’t as friendly as Arabs, or Muslims in general. The style of eating in Tajikistan is much like the Arab world – everyone sits around a communal selection of food and often eats by hand. In Tajikistan, though, the presentation is top-notch – we’re talking crystal decanters, beautifully-painted dishes, and brightly colored table coverings and napkins. I mean, no offensive America and Britain, you’re doing perfectly all right for yourselves in other ways but the East has got us beat by a long shot in this department.
• The similarities of Tajik to Arabic. I knew before I arrived that the Tajik language was similar to Farsi and Russian, but from my previous experience with it last year when Farahnush was with my family, a lot has changed, namely my ability to communicate in Arabic. I would chat with Malik in Arabic occasionally, and the rest of the family would look up suddenly if I said something that had an identical or similar meaning in Tajik. According to estimations, Tajik has as much as 60% vocabulary sharing from Arabic, and even 80% from Farsi. The problem though is that the grammar is entirely different, which prevented me from being able to completely use my Arabic skills for easy communication. Darn!
• The beautiful dresses. It’s interesting that you can find peafowl – peacocks and peahens – here in Central Asia, because the sexual dimorphism between the clothing of men and women here is similar. Men there wear Western-style slacks, trousers, and button-down shirts, but the women – the colors and the fabrics are astounding! Like something out of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, you can find the long, flowing one-piece dresses called koorta everywhere you go in the country, and in the Silk Road region of Uzbekistan too. Malik explained to me that Central Asian men used to wear Persian robes and turbans as well, but after the Soviet takeover, the men where gradually forced to adapt to a style that used pockets by necessity.
• The golden teeth. I was a little worried about putting this one up here, because I wasn’t sure if it would be considered embarrassing or insulting to bring up, but Farahnush assured me that it was perfectly normal to talk about. But I was surprised and curious to see the amount of golden-capped teeth in Tajikistan – in most adults you could expect to see at least two or three such teeth, but for some people, especially women that I saw in the south and the east, their entire mouths were a solid plate of gold. I was told that the simple explanation for this was that for a long time, gold was a cheaper method of fixing teeth than enamel coverings, which with gold now at almost $1000 per ounce now seems pretty ironic.
• The pleasant social drinking. Coming from Jordan and the strict Muslim world, I thought that Tajikistan, which is also a Muslim country, would be the same: drinking alcohol is haram (forbidden) and is not the norm. However, the decades of Soviet influence and cheap vodka imports has apparently made drinking a much more acceptable thing for the average person to do with friends after work. And those prices just cannot be beat – the lowest I’ve ever seen.
• The toasts before a shot. Unlike drinking in America where a shot is merely preceded by the bartender telling you to pay up, a round of vodka shots in Central Asia must first be eloquently toasted by a member of the group, who in turn describes his happiness with the evening, the good company of his fellows, his hope for the health of their families and for many happy returns. I personally did three or four of these spoken toasts myself, of which one was in Tajik (but it was so badly done I can’t reproduce it here). You mustn’t drink your shot until it has been properly hoisted and toasted!
• The beer in 2-liter bottles. ‘Nuff said here. I was pleasantly shocked when Malik and I went out to dinner in Panjakent and we were served strong Samarqandi beer merely by our waitress setting a 2-liter plastic bottle on our table. America, seriously – what is taking you so long to get on this?

And lastly, for your amusement:

• Goats with odd anatomy: This is a breed of goat I’ve never, ever seen before in America, and I’m from a goat farm. Can anyone tell what type of caprinae this is? I’m suspecting that they’re bred for a particular kind of meat section, but I just can’t figure out which section!edit: my mother points out that it’s actually a sheep, not a goat, but it looks like a Nubian breed more than anything else, which is why I was confused. It’s either a “Turki” sheep or a “Tyrol Mountain” sheep.
  
  

  What the heck?

Trip statistics

• Total Pictures taken: 1,288
• Total Pictures taken of me (mostly by Malik and the elder Akbar): 140
• Total Pictures deleted because they were blurred from the bouncing, rollicking Niva: 18
• Total beers consumed: 11? (It depends on it we’re measuring by pint or by two-liter bottle)
• Total shots of Russian or Tajiki vodka: 15
• Total toasts to travel, family, business, and friendship: 15

• Cost of flight with Turkish Airlines: 716 Jordanian Dinar ($1010)
• Cost of Tajik Tourism Visa: $15
  • Actual cost paid by swindling airport attendant for “Commercial Visa”: $56
• Cost of Uzbekistan Tourism Visa: $159 + $40 express charge = $199
• Cost of two-person tourism to Samarqand and Bukhara with Elaina Tours: $550
  • Actual cost paid by me after Elaina Tours realized they had horribly screwed up and not sent the right documents to the border, preventing Malik from entering Uzbekistan: $450 ($100 of which was graciously provided by Malik, even though he wasn’t going, because he wanted to make sure I had enough to get by alone)

Everything seemed to be going fine until just as we were leaving the mountains behind and turning away from the Panj at last, around 11:30 in the morning. We came across a line of cars, then trucks, and finally were forced to grind to a halt as we surveyed a vast sea of mud covering and blocking the road that certainly hadn’t been there before. On the other side, we could see a similar line of vehicles stretching back and along the road we had been hoping to take, their drivers sitting restlessly on the rocks around the road. One man was trying to cross the mud as we watched; it came almost up to his waist, an ugly brown paste that seemed like it might drag him down and under at any second. There was no way that any one of these vehicles, even our trusty Niva, was going to make it across that morass.

Saeed and Malik consulted with some of the other assembled men on our side of the mudslide about what to do. Many had been waiting all morning already, but they had heard that the local government was sending out some tractors to come and push the mud off the road. No one seemed angry or upset about their blocked progress – mostly just bored. I realized that many of them make this trek several times a year, if not more, and roadblocks like this become common in the spring and summer as the mountains shed their winter snow coats into the streams, rivers, and roads below. I settled down to wait in the tall grass by the side of the road as Malik and Saeed began tinkering with the Niva. It seems that after five days of beating it with boulders it was finally showing some signs of stress – a slight grinding noise from the right front wheel, or a ticking noise from the left. Upon seeing people working on a car, other men left their cars and families and drifted over, bringing extra carjacks, advice, and other tools. Meanwhile, Farahnush sat higher up on the hill with some of the Pamiri women in our little convoy and conversed with them, although their accent was so different that dialogue between them was limited. She learned though, that they were from the Darvoz region we had just passed through, and that they become friends with Afghani women that lived on the other side of the river, communicating with each other like pen pals. It’s very different than the borders we’re accustomed to in America, and sad to think that because of the laws (and landmines) imposed on that border, they will never get to actually meet their friends that they can see, only 30 meters away.

We didn’t have to wait long before our cavalry arrived – an old, tired-looking blue and white tractor with a front-end loader attachment chugged up the road a half hour later, driven by a middle-aged man in a polo shirt. He told us that another tractor was on its way “in just a few minutes,” and immediately set to work on the mud. He used his front scoop to push it around, somewhat ineffectually, and nearly got himself stuck several times as a meter of thick goop slid over his small front tires and threatened to roll him right off the road. Meanwhile, Farahnush and I stood with the men, who were by this point smoking, chatting like old friends, or smoking. Farther up the newly-created stream, some people were carrying their possessions, slogging through the mud in their boxers with their pants carried over their heads to keep them clean.

The first tractor begins its futile work, mud sliding back down around it

After an hour of work, the poor tractor had barely moved the mud and we were forced to admit that we’d need something larger to do the trick. Malik and Saeed, having done all they could for the bent front axle here in the wilderness, drove our group into a nearby village back the way we came. We were invited in for lunch by a sympathetic man and his family, who served us heaping bowls of traditional soup with bread and listened intently as Malik described the problem and situation to him, waving off any money offered to him with a firm smile. By the time we made it back out to the road, it was almost 5 in the afternoon, and now a few people had gotten the initiative to start using shovels and try to dig the road free under their own power. Even an old sheikh, his white beard shining with sweat and pale legs covered with mud to the thigh, was working with a couple younger men as the crowd around the road grew ever larger with people.

Tajiki citizens labor to shovel mud off the road, since no official help is coming

I couldn’t stand the sight of that old man working that way while I was sitting on the sidelines doing nothing. I started to remove my wristwatch and shoes with preparation to join them, and Farahnush translated for me to a group of bystanders my hope that at least 20 or 30 of us could work together and at least have the road partially freed by the time night fell. My wish was met with skepticism; this was not the time for idealism, not when a tractor was on its way. “But there was a tractor coming here 6 hours ago and it still hasn’t arrived!” I retorted. “If I let you go out there and dig mud, my mom is going to kill me – this is supposed to be your restful vacation!” Farah told me. At this, Malik told me he was going back to the village to go look for a local tractor who would help us – for a price. I remembered, though, that the government was supposed to be paying to send out local tractors to blocked roads – shouldn’t they be paying for this? My questions were met by the group with knowing, cynical smiles.

Within another hour, the road rumbled with the sound of an approaching bulldozer, a huge tank-like machine with treads that was easily twice the size of our previous tractor. Upon the driver’s arrival, his first order of business was collecting gasoline for his bulldozer and his fee – 10 somoni per vehicle waiting for a total of about 650 somoni. He had brought a friend with him who moved in among the cars, collecting the bills and change from the families and truck drivers. As I stood nearby, a thin man sauntered up to Farahnush, eyed me up and down, and murmured something to her. Her eyes grew wide and she quickly led me away from the area, explaining that if the driver saw me, and recognized me as an American, he’d raise the price for everything if he thought he could get away with it. No one seemed surprised by that thought, and Malik agreed that there was a good chance he’d do that. As the bulldozer easily cut through sun-dried mud, I watched from a distance, behind everyone else in an attempt to remove even the possibility of becoming a problem. A man with one leg supported himself with crutches and observed the proceedings nearby, and asked Farahnush if things like this happened in America, to which she replied that natural disasters like floods and mudslides happen everywhere, but in America they probably would have responded to it faster than 7 hours. I mentally corrected her – the Tajiki government, the “they” in question, still hadn’t responded to it. The border guards and БДА police crouched uselessly nearby. They had watched the elderly Tajiki man struggling in the mud without even lifting a finger in his support. And now everyone was forced to pay out-of-pocket for this bulldozer, since the government had never sent one. If Malik hadn’t been lucky enough to find one willing to drive out, who knows how long this convoy would have waited.

Rock (and) rolling: now THAT's what we needed 7 hours ago.

Suddenly people realized that their 7 hour imposition was about to be removed and the other side of the river was emptied of people, doors slamming as they climbed back into the cars. The bulldozer was almost finished with a small path when the first car, a white Niva like our own from the other side, daringly raced over the mud without waiting for an “all clear” sign. With a loud squishing noise, he promptly got himself stuck in the muck next to the tractor, raising a low, schadenfreudic chuckle from the crowd. “And the first shall be last,” I quipped, while Farahnush and Malik agreed that because of the driver’s impatience, no one was going to go out of their way to help him unstick his truck. A few minutes later, the other side started to proceed through the narrow gap in the mud, and people from our side shouted angrily at them – why were they going first? Personally, I agreed that the other side should go first…it was almost dark now, which meant that they’d be traversing the steep, landmine-covered slopes over the river with nothing but headlights and they’d have no place to stop and rest until Qal’ai Khumb, four hours down the road. Our side, on the other hand, would be out of the mountains soon and on our way to Kulob. Just my opinion on things.

The dull blue glow of the afternoon was just disappearing over the mountain as our Niva pulled through the gap, one of the leaders of our side of the river due to our early arrival. The bulldozer driver and his friend stooped on the bank, watching the proceedings with satisfaction. I wondered how often they had been found by desperate drivers, and commented that next time, the government should hire them for their bulldozer instead of the broken down little tractor. I thought it would be an easy ride from here, but apparently we weren’t “out of the mountains” yet – the road was closed up ahead, probably due to more mudslide damage, causing us to detour down the cliff towards the river towards a small town, which I saw only briefly before the darkness swept over the valley. On the edge of the village our convoy came across a pack of young women, probably between the ages of 14-18, standing on the sides of the dirt road. They were laughing, holding up vegetables and juice, and enjoying the proceedings like it was a party. To my surprise, they chorused to us, in English, “Buy something!”

Within 15 minutes I found myself wishing they had been selling antacids, because we had entered The Alluvial Plain From Hell, a ridiculous stretch of boulders the size of basketballs, no discernible path, and the bumpiest ride we had yet experienced. In the darkness, our line of vehicles, 40-long, searched blindly for some way to find the backroad that would connect us with the highway again, almost getting completely lost several times. I found myself literally praying for the car’s survival as we banged over the rocks, hearing the poor Niva groan as we pushed its offroad ability to ridiculous limits. I knew that if we broke down here it would be almost as bad as if we were still in that mountain pass. But at long last our headlights finally shown against a dusty road rising back up again to connect to the main road.

The Niva continued to get worse, making more and more horrifying noises as we lurched out of the mountains and back onto a paved road. Finally it got to the point where Malik didn’t want to risk his daughter and adopted son, so he called another one of his friends in Kulob and found a place for us to stay. Khudo ba shukur – Tajiki for “thanks to God” – for Malik’s numerous friends! It’s amazing the hospitality of the Tajiks – the bearded young sheikh that invited us into his home three hours later at midnight had mattresses, dinner, tea, and a place all prepared for us like we had made reservations a week in advance.