You may have noticed that my blog entries are sometimes out of sequence. There are two reasons for this. The first one is a good one. Revealing some of my travel plans in real time would violate operational security and even though I write innocuously and in general terms, I might accidentally reveal something important. So if you are an ordinary reader, I apologize for any confusion. If you are a bad guy looking for information, I expect the Marines are coming for you and you should probably just give up.
The other reason is more practical. Sometimes I do not have access to computers or internet. The time I write the most is when I am stuck someplace waiting for a flight. I take notes in my little green books and I do not get around to transcribing them for awhile. In any case, I have a notebook full of notes and not so much time to transcribe, so the order may suffer.
Speaking of out of order, here is a good picture from the pyramids.
Check-in was “passenger only” so I couldn’t go in with Alex. Instead, I watched through the glass for an agonizing forty-five minutes while he waded through a disorganized gaggle that passes for a line around here. He has grown into a man, stronger than I am, and it is silly of me to fret about him. Still, I see the little boy even as I look at the man. I am profoundly sad to see him off. Separation from family is easy to contemplate but harder to live.
I had a good time with him in Egypt and it is hard to go back to Iraq. I traveled again through Kuwait. Ali Al Salem is not a nice place. The chow hall in not as good as Al Asad and tent living is intrinsically difficult. This time was worse. I got in late so they put me in a big barracks tent with bunk beds. All the beds were full except one top bunk. I took it. It was drafty and uncomfortable. I was worried that I would fall out, not that I usually fall out of bed, but it is like standing near a cliff w/o a guard rail. You can walk close to the edge of sidewalk w/o a thought, but when there is a drop off, you just feel less secure.
From Kuwait, I flew on a C17. It is a flying warehouse. We were packed in like sardines, but the flight to Al Asad lasted only an hour. I had my gear on my lap and pressed against the seat in front of me, so I could not take a deep breath, but as long as I did not try to move around, it wasn’t so bad. I slept most of the way. The funny thing was that when I got back to my can at Al Asad, it felt like home. You can get used to anything.
I was interested in seeing Heliopolis because I am interested in planned communities from the “garden city” era in the early 20th Century an era and concept that produced some of the most livable cities. Many of the places where people want to live today, but usually cannot afford – Beverly Hills, Grosse Point, Chestnut Hill & Coral Gables – started out as garden cities. Unfortunately, the idea fell out of favor with planners and architects by mid-century and we were building some of the ugliest and most dysfunctional communities in human history. The hideousness was worldwide. It is hard to believe that someone created places like Nowa Huta, Cabrini Green or Brasilia on purpose. I think we can learn from successes and failures.
Heliopolis is still relatively more livable than the rest of Cairo, but the population and squalor of the larger city have overwhelmed it. In theory you can walk around, but the Cairo driving habits make that dangerous. The inhabitants and authorities are making efforts to clean up some of the squalor, but a prerequisite for a livable city is control of traffic & overcrowding. Unless you do that, it is like cleaning the birdcage w/o feeding the bird.
The most interesting book I read on this sort of topic was “A Pattern Language”. The authors went around the world to compile the factors that people want in their cities. Galleries or porches are one of the important factors they found. Heliopolis has them. Another factor was access to shops. These are also present. I think if they got the traffic problem under control, this place would be just fine. From the guidebook I thought this would be a more pleasant place. I guess in a city with nearly 20 million people packed so tightly together, that is something you just do not get.
Some of the shopkeepers & taxi drivers we met alluded to this. They complained that their upscale customers were disappearing, drawn out of Cairo to the controlled and agreeable resorts. At first, people went to the resorts when they visited Egypt. More and more, however, they are just going to resorts that happen to be in Egypt w/o regard to the rest of the country. The Red Sea resorts are where they are because the sun shines every day not because they are in Egypt. They could be anywhere in the world.
The take away lesson from this is that if you do not provide people with the pleasant amenities they want, they will find them someplace else, and the most influential people will leave first.
Above is part of my once and future path to work. I get off at Smithsonian and walk around 15 minutes. Not bad. The gravel part is like Al Asad. Otherwise, there are few similarities.
What you do is a truer reflection of your values than what you say or even what you truly think you believe. My pattern of choices always brings me back to the same core skills and keeps me in the FS, where my idiosyncrasies are not merely tolerated but occasionally rewarded.
When I volunteered to go to Iraq, I figured this would be my last FS assignment. After that I could retire honorably and do it happily. The FS has an up or out system and I thought I would be out next year. They screwed up my plans by promoting me and leading me into more career temptation than I could resist. My pattern of choices once again reveals my true preferences and I will be back where I began, chaining my bike to the same parking meter, running on the same Mall path and lifting weights at the same Gold’s Gym, but doing different work. I accepted the position of director of the policy group at International Information Programs. I will move to a new office in the same building – from director of IIP/S (speakers) to director of IIP/P (policy). I will just make the move via a sojourn in Iraq and I am content with both the journey and the destination. I have lots of friends there.”We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
TS Elliott stopped too soon. We only know the place until we set off again. Someday I will be finished, but not today.
We saw the pyramids. They are magical and more impressive than you would think from pictures. The sphinx is smaller, however. We rode up on camels to see these wonders. It cost more, but it was a good experience and now that I have done it I will never have to do it again. The camel is a horse designed by a committee. They are truly odd looking and unpleasant animals. They burp, spit and stink.
We had a good guide who had relationships (i.e. gave money) with the guards to let us “park” near some of the pyramids and we had the pleasure of being almost alone in the quiet near some of the smaller pyramids. It makes a big difference. We could see the thousands of people in the distance touring the macro sites. When we went down to see the sphinx we had the crowd crush experience. There is always somebody around who wants money. It detracts.
Below I am sitting with our guide. He spoke good English and claimed to have spent his whole life near the pyramids, at first as a child selling little tokens.
Memphis was the capital of Egypt for hundreds of years. Today there is nothing but palms trees and a big monument area in the nearby desert. This is Saqqara. In some ways it is more interesting than the pyramids at Giza. The first pyramids are here. At first they are just a pile of rubble, but then you get a step pyramid (pyramid of Djoser) that is the precursor of the pyramids we all know.
We got to Saqqara early enough to avoid the crowds. In fact, we were just about a half hour ahead of a bus caravan of Germans. They were hot on our heels throughout the area. Going in tour groups has some advantages. You get some lecture by the guide and the numbers help dilute the effect of the ubiquitous pseudo guides who show you how to get into a monument or point you to the clearly marked path and then want money.
I do not believe that the average guide furnishes accurate information. Just listening to those around me I heard all sorts of conflicting stories. The guides’ main goal is to make the listeners happy so that he will get a bigger tip, so he tailors history to suite what he thinks the audiences wants to hear or a narrative that is easier to tell. I am not sure it really matters very much anyway. I cannot believe I just wrote that. Those who know me know that I am very particular about historical accuracy, but in this case the person is going to remember only that he saw something very old. The details will be buried in the sands of time, shrouded in the mist of antiquity or lost like a drunk’s car keys on a dark night, depending on the metaphor you like best. This is tourism, not scholarship.
After Saqqara we went to the probable site of Memphis. Layers of mud had covered the place, but they still sometimes dig out interesting things. There was a giant stature of Ramesses laying on the ground and they built a viewing area around it Ramesses was evidently the vainest man in world history. He wrote his name on everything, including the statues of previous pharaohs, but this was supposedly really him. We got to Memphis a few minutes ahead of the Germans, but that is about all the time it took to see the place.
Our driver took us to a carpet “museum”, i.e. a place where they show you an exhibit of carpet making for a minute and then try to sell you carpets for the next hour. Drivers get a kickback and I don’t begrudge them this. We went to a papyrus museum yesterday, same thing. And they tried to draw us into a perfume factory. We were immune to these enticements, however, having already been already fleeced at papyrus and perfume museums near the Egyptian museum.
For me the most interesting part of the day was a visit to the Coptic area. Copts still make up about 10% of the population. The churches are reminiscent of the Romans & Byzantines. I like that history. According to the narrative at the museums, Egypt has more relics of early Christianity than anyplace else because the climate preserves them. Besides, Egypt was a center of early Christianity. It is interesting to see how Islam so obliterated Christianity in all but a few pockets in what really was its homeland in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor and of course the Holy Land itself.
We wanted to go to a nearby restaurant, but the driver told us that we would get food poisoning if we even walked in. He took us to an authentic tourist buffet restaurant. Those Germans who, had been just behind us all day, were now in front and already sitting at the restaurant. We had the Egyptian meal auf deutsch.
It was a busy day. Back at the Marriott we went to the restaurant that called itself Egyptians and called ourselves content. Then a strange thing happened. It rained. People are accustomed to water flowing in the river and are a little surprised to see it falling from the sky. The waiters were all exercised & talking about it. After living in Al Anbar for a couple of months, I understand.I will post pictures of all the things above when I get back to Al Asad.
This is the end of the day on one of our patrols. You cannot see much, but I think the picture is iconic. The big truck is an MRAP – horrible thing. You cannot really drive it offroad because it bounces so much. They are not very durable either. There was a lot of politics behind getting them here so quick. I expect most of them will become part of that ever growing junk heap in Iraq.
I asked my team to dress like civilians around camp. We are issued military uniforms, but some of us just cannot wear them right. Our slovenly uniform appearance offends the Marines, so it is best to avoid the situation entirely by wearing civilian garb except when we are forward deployed.
I also took away the guns. A couple guys liked to strut strapped like the Cisco Kid. We are a civilian team. Wherever we go, Marines are there with lots of guns to protect us. If the bad guys get past them, past the 50 calibers and through the armor, my guess is that an old guy with a pistol is not going to turn the tide. The Marines have the added advantage of knowing how to use their weapons. An untrained civilians (or one whose training dates from the Johnson Administration) is more likely to shoot himself, his friends or some nearby kids than the enemy.
The real warriors don’t need some drugstore cowboys playing war. We should, all of us, do the jobs we do best. Our team is diplomatic and it is our time. “For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Or as Clint Eastwood put it more succinctly, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.”
I cannot load a new picture of Alex & me, but I have a very old one. He has changed a bit (me too).
Three times a year they open the gate and parole us inmates for regional rest breaks. The State Department is very generous. They drop you in Kuwait of Amman and you can go anywhere you want with the caveats that you pay for your own trip and come back a week later.
For my first break, I am going to Egypt to meet Alex and together visit the treasures of the Nile. Alex likes history and it is fun to travel with him to these sorts of places. I still recall with great fondness the trip we made to Rome together when he was thirteen. But the road to Egypt runs through Kuwait.
They have an enormous tent city at Ali Al Salem base and I got a nice bed, with a real mattress and blankets in a tent barracks. I arrived aboard my C-130 just in time to miss evening chow and too early to wait for mid-rats, so I went to McDonald’s. This is the first time I have paid for food in more than three months. The Big Mac Meal was filling, but I did not feel that I had missed much by not having it these past months.
AAS base is around 45 minutes from the civilian airport in Kuwait. You go by bus and the bus terminal at the base is remarkably like bus terminals everywhere, with the exception that it lacks the little distractions like coffee shops, restaurants and newsstands. In return, however, you get the gift of time, time for introspection, time for reading, time for just being. Time like this is an anachronism in our scheduled and connected world.
I have the gift of time, with no deeds to do, no promises to keep. Some might complain of boredom, but I am just “feeling groovy” and remembering a little Coleridge.
Time, Real & Imaginary
ON the wide level of a mountain’s head (I knew not where, but ’twas some faery place), Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread, Two lovely children run an endless race, A sister and a brother! This far outstripp’d the other; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy behind: For he, alas! is blind! O’er rough and smooth with even step he pass’d,
Egyptians have been very friendly. Some are just the trying to sell something, but others seemed genuine. We are staying at the Marriott, where I stay whenever I can all around the world. The Cairo Marriot is more opulent than most. It sits in a beautiful garden area on an island in the Nile in a palace built by the Egyptian Khedive to host Euro-Royalty during the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Among the guests were Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Eugene, wife of Napoleon III. I suppose they had really nice rooms. Today the rooms are typical Marriott. I like that. I feel at home.
Outside the Egyptian Museum
Alex & I walked to the Egyptian Museum, which is just across the river not far from the hotel. It is full of artifacts, perhaps over full. The place has a little bit the feel of a warehouse, with artifacts stacked in rows. After you have seen one mummy, you have pretty much seen them all, kinda dry and depressing. But I enjoyed seeing all those things I have seen pictured in history books. We saw the King Tut stuff, for example.
The desert preserves things that would have long ago turned into dust or compost in any other environment. I especially like the little wooden figures showing ordinary life and people working in brewing, baking and textiles. I prefer these kinds of things to the death obsessed culture of the tombs. How they lived in more interesting than how they died. The gold and art from the tombs is spectacular, but it was a waste of for the people of the time to literally slave away their lives to fill monuments to the dead. I don’t much like the jackal-headed gods either.
Old & new
We tend to think of Egypt only in relation to those who built the pyramids but there is a lot more. Roman and Greek history was always my specialty and I am more interested in Egypt under the Greek Ptolemy and the Romans. This period lasted more than 1000 years, but we often telescope history and move from the pharaohs to the caliphs, with only a brief glace at Anthony & Cleopatra, usually even forgetting that Cleo was a nice Greek girl descendents from one of Alexander the Great’s generals. Cairo was built on a Roman city called Babylon. It is a little ironic that I had to travel FROM the country of the original Babylon to see one. The Christian Copts, descended from the original inhabitants, still live on the site.
This is one of the narrowest buildings I have seen.
Parts of Cairo are pleasant, but it is never peaceful and walking around is not much fun. Drivers pay no attention to crosswalks or signals. You have to run for you life to cross busy streets and there are lots of busy streets. As Alex and I waited to run across one busy street, some guys on the other side actually mocked us for being timid. The funniest thing I saw was a bus turn a corner too sharply and three guys literally fell out. They landed on their feet and just chased the bus to get back on. Cacophony is the word to describe roads. Everybody feels it necessary to beep his horn just like a bored dog has to bark at everybody who passes. We did a lot of walking nevertheless. It seems like everybody wants to talk and invite you back to their shop for free tea. Of course, it is not really free. If you stop more than a few seconds, taxis pull up and ask if you need a ride I have to admire their energy, but I would prefer to have a little more peace.
