The Northern Mountains

We have been able to spend five days visiting a number of villages and markets in the northern mountains, far away from any sort of modern conveniences. Our guide, Cao, is from a town on the Chinese border who knows the area well, and can speak some of the local languages. He makes us breakfast and lunch every day, using bread and Laughing Cow cheese that he brought from the south, local eggs, local greens and hacked chicken, and noodles and rice. We eat on little tables tucked onto open porches on the street.

The diversity of the tribes is amazing. Most of the country’s minority groups live here – eleven million people comprise 53 different ethnic groups that are further divided into multiple subgroups, giving Viet Nam the most complex ethnic makeup in Southeast Asia. Many of the tribes have migrated from regions of China, but some share racial characteristics with Indonesians and other island peoples.

Despite diversity of tribal origin, dress and language, their lives are similar. Most of them stay always close to home. Farms have been created primarily by swidden farming – slash and burn trees, clear and terrace the land. These mountains were once heavily forested, but over years they have been stripped then planted. Traditionally, a family carries soil up from the valley or moves every few years, as the soil depletes. The work is arduous, and everyone participates. Children are unsmiling and sober, expected to work along with their parents when they are young, and to take care of them when they become adults.

The food here is mostly vegetables: rice, corn, cabbage and greens. Every inch is planted – a couple of square feet of soil at the edge of the road will have three or four stalks of corn. In the larger terraces, two crops of rice and one of another vegetable are planted each year. Some families have a few chickens, and occasionally a pig, but malnutrition is an ever-present problem for the region.

Life is dependent on weather and luck. The houses are partially open, and usually have only a couple of low-watt bulbs to light inside, so the weather outside – cold, rain, whatever – is what the people live in. It affects the amount of food they will have, and their health. Our guide visited a friend whose wedding he had attended last year. The man had lost four water buffalo and two cows to the hoof and mouth disease that was rampant in the cold, wet winter that just ended. Without water buffalo it is impossible to farm effectively.

We brought several different gifts with us on this trip. We gave out candy for the children everywhere. The older children take it, then share it immediately with their younger siblings; different from most countries where they grab as much as possible then horde it. Balloons were a big hit. But most rewarding was the gift of reading glasses. You see no spectacles here at all, on young or old people, so we picked up a dozen pairs of inexpensive reading glasses in Hanoi. They were mostly taken by women, who continue embroidering as long as they can see, but there was one man who just kept looking at his sleeve and his watch, grinning broadly.

To Market To Market

The mountainous region of northeastern Vietnam, populated mostly by groups of Hmong, Tay and Zao who come here from China several hundred years ago, has been under dispute with China since the late ‘70’s. It has recently been opened for travel. Tourists today are mostly from China and other parts of Vietnam so it’s fairly untouched. Seeing this area is the main reason we came to Vietnam.

To get to here was a full day drive from Hanoi, a change in altitude, and a large change in wealth and amenities. Here there are guest houses, not hotels. The rooms are unheated, always chilly and damp. Bathrooms have western fixtures, but no tubs – just showers that pour onto the floor and although that works well, walking through them afterwards is pretty slippery. The beds are different from any I have ever used – like plywood, but surprisingly good to sleep on. Most interesting are the lobbies, which are a combination of garage (our van drives right up to the check-in desk and spends the night) banquet hall, bar and restaurant. All completely open and unheated.

We spend some time visiting villages and homes. In general, houses of the minority tribes are built on stilts, with animals kept underneath. This comes from a time when they needed protection from wild animals, but it also provides some safety and warmth for them today. Upstairs is the main part of the house. In very prosperous homes there is a kitchen, a television, glass in the windows, and an open sleeping area. Upstairs, under the thatched roof, is storage and more sleeping. In most of the homes there is a pit for a fire that is used for cooking, and stacks of vegetables on the main floor.

The priorities for a man of these tribes are three. First he needs to get some land and a water buffalo to farm it. Second, he takes a wife. Third, he builds a house. The house is a long process – one of the nicer ones we visited took fifteen years, during which the man found the lumber and cut it, fashioned the logs for tongue-in-groove, then assembled it with the help of other villagers.

The economy is subsistence farming with some sales at local markets. The land here is all mountainous, very steep, often very rocky. In the years that these people have been here the mountains have been stripped of their original forest, then terraced for planting. Everywhere the mountainside has been worked into flat areas, some only a foot or two wide – and soil carried up from the valley to fill it. There is not so much rice here– that is mostly at the bottom, – but many vegetables. In the worst places, between rocks and on very steep areas, are sugar cane and corn. We see people at every level working. This is winter, so most of it is in building new terraces using hand tools and bringing up soil in baskets.

Today is Tiger Day, Saturday, and we plant to go to a huge market in Minh Tan. It’s an hour drive from_our night Yen Minh, over a pass on the narrow, very windy mountain road that connects all of these villages. The drives are fascinating, scarily high with lots of passing on curves and little visibility in the fog. There’s not much point in being nervous, or in wearing a seatbelt – as Maynard points out, if we go off the edge a seatbelt will not matter.
We are hurrying to the market when suddenly Cao says “Oh no – bad luck” and then a couple of other things in Vietnamese. We can see across the valley that our road is blocked by a cement truck. Scooters are going around it but there isn’t enough room for anything larger. The driver and a couple of the scooter men stand around and scratch their heads.

We get close to the truck. Cao and our driver run up to it, Jim and Maynard follow with their cameras. There is about ten minutes of trying to get the truck to move, but it’s stuck across a hairpin, the drive wheels behind the cab skidding on mud on the inside and gravel on the outside. Finally the men start to pile gravel on the outside of the truck to give us more “road” to maneuver around. Ginny and I get out of the van and run ahead as the driver inches past on the out (downhill) side. And he makes it, with only one major scratching sound.

And we are off to market!

And what a market it is. Probably five hundred people in the mist and rain and mud, selling and buying everything from pregnant pigs to cell phones and flat screened TVs. I get Jim to take a picture of some of the pigs, and our driver translates for us the owner saying in wonder “Why are they taking a picture of filthy pigs?”
It’s not just a market, it’s the social event of the week. The women group and regroup into clutches talking and drinking tea. Teenagers walk around in groups, eyeing other groups of the opposite sex, then pairing up and slipping off. The men have their own way of being social, using corn liquor. By 11:30 AM when we leave many of them are blasted. They stagger and become friendly. Several walk up to Jim and ask to have their picture taken; one hugs him when he sees it on the display. The way back for most of these people to walk, purchases carried on their backs. I have no idea how the women get their husbands home.

A Bag of Coffee

On Saturday we fly to Da Nang, into the airport built by US Marines in 1965. The Center of Vietnam is filled with names I remember from the war – Da Nang, China Beach, Hue, Khe Sanh, and Tu Cung Hamlet (My Lai). Our guide, Tuan, works with many American veterans who are returning to see the country. The atmosphere is very different now. In fact the drive from Da Nang along China Beach is filled with hotels and pilings of new hotels on the South China Sea. The vision is that it will someday be a Miami Beach, magnet for Asians and Europeans who want a beach resort vacation.

There’s a lot of history here, and much of it is about Ho Chi Minh. He spent his whole life working to unite Vietnam and to free it from foreign dominance: from the French, from the US, and from the Chinese. Interestingly, immediately after WWII he opted to have the French stay in the North rather than the Chinese, saying that he would rather “smell French shit for five years than Chinese shit for the rest of his life.” It is obvious that the Vietnamese do not trust, and do not like the Chinese

Our first days are spent in Hoi An, an ancient fishing village built by Chinese and Japanese traders in the sixteenth century. Maynard was here 13 years ago, and can’t wait to see again the beautiful houses built over two hundred years ago along the three streets that make up the town – pale yellow and blue and green, with dark wood shutters and doors. And they are all still there, but now they house restaurants and shops and art galleries. The fishermen have all gone into the tourist trade or moved away. Hoi An was declared a UNESCO Heritage site in 1999, and the tourists began to come, bringing money to the local economy and changing it at the same time.

There is a wonderful local produce/fish/meat market each morning. The people selling there arrive at 4 AM using torches to light their way. It runs along the riverfront and down a couple of streets, and it’s mostly covered by plastic bags on poles – even I have to keep my head down to walk through, so it’s a real challenge for Jim.

We go before breakfast, so Ginny and I need to get coffee. The high point of Viet Nam is their coffee – it’s made very strong then mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Just fabulous. At the market we find a couple selling it by the water. We can sit down on plastic stools and have it in glasses, but we want to keep up with Jim and Maynard, so we take it “to go.” They mix a concentrate of coffee, the milk, add boiling water, then pour it all into a plastic bag, close it with a rubber band and put a straw in it. We can stroll along the market seeing the ducks and chickens and fish, watch women slice vegetables and dodge the bicycles and motorscooters, and still have our coffee. What fun. And it’s the best coffee I’ve had on the trip so far!

Vietnam Photos

We have been in Vietnam for just over a week, and I am posting my first photos. Photographing people here is a challenge. First, it is very crowded. There are over eighty million people in Vietnam so there is not a lot of space. And the people do not welcome photography. I have been waved off many times. Now, I am worried about my self confidence.

We are in Hue, which is the middle of the country. Tomorrow we leave for Hanoi.

Click here to see my Vietnam pictures. I am placing a link on the blogroll on the right where you can always find the pictures.

Asian Plumbing

I have travelled extensively in Asia for almost 20 years. Plumbing for toilets, sinks and showers is adequate but rudimentary outside of big cities.

But Asians are nothing if not innovative and they love hi-tech, so when they decide to improve, they leap-frog anything available in the US. Witness Japanese toilets, which now have heated seats, automatic spray after-cleaning and even play music. The company To-to is bringing many of its improvements to the US, and if these digital wonders are not popular yet, the more basic types are selling well.

In Ho Chi Minh City our hotel has what will certainly be the next-generation of shower. It’s a self-contained unit, reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Orgasmatron, with glass doors that slide shut encapsulating the user in a combination shower/Jacuzzi. But it’s so much more – there’s no need to leave to see the city. There is an FM wave radio, a CD player, a telephone. For anyone who wants a shower, there is a choice of overhead or hose type, with or without the twelve spray jets from all sides. If your day has been particularly dirty, you can just push the ozone release button to be deodorized. There’s a steam bath also, and an emergency bell. A mirror. A foot massager. The system is run by a control panel with 20 touch pads. They each have symbols on them, but these are a little obscure, so there are detailed instructions posted on the outside of the unit. Jim and I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure it all out, pushing this and that, but in the end, I could only get the hose shower to work. The temperature is controlled by the non-functioning touch pads, so it was a little chilly.

Five years ago I was in Ladakh, dumping a bucket of water over my head in a freezing room. The result was pretty much the same.

River of Nine Dragons: The Mekong Delta

The Mekong River rises in Tibet, flows through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and then breaks up into multiple branches in Vietnam before it empties into the South China Sea. Flooding, endemic to the region, is kept under some control by a complex network of canals designed by Indian traders over 18 centuries ago.

The region is very fertile, and recently hugely successful in selling its products. Before Moi Doi, farmers worked for the government at a fixed wage. There were checkpoints every 100-200 km to detect transport (smuggling) and selling (profiteering) of produce. As a result, Vietnam was an importer of rice and the country was plagued with periodic famines. Since privatization of farms in the ‘80’s, Vietnam has become the second largest exporter of rice in the world, and also a significant exporter of coffee, paper, rubber and fruit. They take great pride in the fact that they have now sent farmers to Nigeria and Sierra Leone to teach them better techniques for growing rice.

When you drive through the area, you are always next to water, always crossing bridges, and often taking ferries. So for fun, you go by boat. We took a two-day “cruise” on a small one, along with four French who never quite acknowledged our presence. It was a real hoot – everything mini, but complete: tiny beds, tiny bathroom, a “shower” arrangement in the bathroom. And, like all cruises, great food!

The high point was visiting a floating market. For that, we launched off on a tiny skiff with about six seats and a tin roof.  The Cai Rant market is huge, there are hundreds of boats of all sizes buying and selling everything. It’s a wholesale market, so large numbers of items were changing hands. A buyer would chug up to a seller, pay for his produce, then the transfer would be a sequence of tosses – 50 watermelons or whatever – from one boat to the other.

Most had the produce stuffed below deck. A pole at the front of the boat was used to “advertise.” So, if it was onions for sale from that boat, there would be an onion hanging from the pole. In the first few minutes, I saw:

Beef

Cabbages

White pumpkins

Pineapples

Watermelons

Radishes

Pork

Potatoes

Garlic

Onions

Sweet Potatoes

Jackfruit

Then I tired of writing them down. It is clearly a long morning if you need to shop for everything, so there were lots of canoe-sized craft snaking through the larger boats selling tea and coffee and sodas to drink.

We stayed for about an hour so Jim and Maynard could photograph. Jim spent the time up on the tin roof of the boat, and I waited for a splash as we bumped our way through the crowd. Luckily, he held on and we got back to our little cruise ship intact.

We spent our last night in the Mekong in Chau Doc, on our own. Our guide Hung recommended that we try a restaurant across the street from the hotel to sample the local specialty, Lau, so off we went.

The restaurant was just a few tables on the sidewalk. There were no customers when we went there, unless you count the very skinny dogs and cats hanging around. The menu had a few English words on it, so we found the page for Lau, and each ordered some. The woman who took our order seemed surprised by it, but then the beers came and we relaxed, pleased at our ability to eat local. Finally, the woman set up four gas burners on the table, one in front of each of us, put a huge pot of noodles, vegetables and whatever on each and turned them on. The heat was intense and the cats began to circle.

It was terrible. Jim managed to get a few helpings of his Eel Lau down before he gave up. Ginny only tasted her Fish Lau briefly. Maynard said his Chicken Lau was not bad, but then gave up after a couple of bites, wondering if maybe he could get some toast. We finished our beers and paid. The cats came closer. Do they want our dinner, or maybe they were dinner?

We finally went back to the hotel, into the dining room, and ordered dinner.

Three Million Motorscooters

The City.  Officially Ho Chi Minh City, but still Saigon to those from the South, this does not have the look of a dour Communist  metropolis. Stores are open and full and restaurants are crowded. The people, while not really friendly, are talkative and energetic, dressed in trendy city styles. And moving constantly.

Ho Chi Minh City has 8 million residents who ride 3 million motorscooters. They flow constantly through the streets, resembling nothing more than a one-dimensional swarm of bees that maneuvers instinctively around pedestrians, cars and trucks. They generally ride one or two to a cycle, but often carry a couple of children in addition. There are as many women riders as men: the women cover their faces with masks and their hands and arms with long gloves to protect themselves from the sun. The riders wear helmets now too, because of a recent law, but these seem insubstantial, as much use as a Yarmulke might be in an accident.

We arrived with Ginny and Maynard Switzer on Sunday night, just escaping a  winter snowstorm to come to this city sitting in the humid mid-nineties. HCMC is an interesting mix of the influences of its past. Chinatown is very large, and the home the Cha Lon Wholesale Market, a huge, tight packed mix of ………everything: spices, butchers, plastic ware, women’s shoes, barrettes, vegetables, dried bird’s nest, laid out in a dizzying lack of order or sense. Other areas of the city are very European with broad avenues and sculptured parks,  but much of it is narrow and windy. There are several memorials to the wars – referred to as the French War and the American War.

And religions. Vietnam is at the convergence of many religions. Most people consider themselves to be Buddhist, yet Confucianism shapes family and civic values, and Taoism the understanding of the cosmos. Fully ten percent of the people are Catholic, and that number is growing since the suppression of the religion by communism has ended. A fascinating religion, Cao Dai, created by the Vietnamese, has grown out of this convergence. In 1925, Ngo Van Chieu received a vision that told him to create a religion that was the culmination of two earlier alliances of God and mankind – those brought about first by Moses and then by Jesus Christ. We visited a pagoda of this religion, At the entrance was a painting of the meeting of Ngo Van Chieu with Sun Yat Sen and Victor Hugo, entitled “The Three Saints.” There are 2-3 million people who espouse this mix of Eastern and Western philosophies. Amazing.

There are a few vestiges of the communist government – a press that publishes 600 newspapers and magazines yet is completely run by the government, TV and radio whose content is broad but whose real news is controlled by the government. But with the fall of communism in Europe in the late 80’s, and the loss of financial support from Russia, Vietnam has experimented with a much broader economy. Doi Moi beginning in  1986 permitted private ownership of businesses. 1995 saw recognition of the Vietnamese government by the US. Vietnam joined the WTO in 2007 and is now a member of ASEAN.

Just over forty years ago the US was at war with this country, a war that was so devastating that it fractured the structure and values of the US, killed 58 thousand Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and left millions wounded and displaced. Now relations seem to be coming to a full normal, as if nothing had ever happened. Except for all those dead boys.

Books and Movies Suggested on our Trip

During our tour of the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan), we shared movies and books we loved. Here is the list.

Books

• The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan

Starred Review* To see in human scale the tragic collision of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, Tolan focuses on one small stone house in Ramla–once an Arab community but now Jewish. Built in 1936 by an Arab family but acquired by a Jewish family after the Israelis captured the city in 1948, this simple stone house has anchored for decades the hopes of both its displaced former owners and its new Jewish occupants. With remarkable sensitivity to both families’ grievances, Tolan chronicles the unlikely chain of events that in 1967 brought a long-dispossessed Palestinian son to the threshold of his former home, where he unexpectedly finds himself being welcomed by the daughter of Bulgarian Jewish immigrants. Though that visit exposes bitterly opposed interpretations of the past, it opens a real–albeit painful–dialogue about possibilities for the future. As he establishes the context for that dialogue, Tolan frankly details the interethnic hostilities that have scarred both families. Yet he also allows readers to see the courage of families sincerely trying to understand their enemy. Only such courage has made possible the surprising conversion of the contested stone house into a kindergarten for Arab children and a center for Jewish-Arab coexistence. What has been achieved in one small stone building remains fragile in a land where peacemaking looks increasingly futile. But Tolan opens the prospect of a new beginning in a concluding account of how Jewish and Arab children have together planted seeds salvaged from one desiccated lemon tree planted long ago behind one stone house. A much-needed antidote to the cynicism of realpolitik. Bryce Christensen

• From Beirut to Jerusalem, Tom Friedman

Friedman, who twice garnered the Pulitzer as a New York Times correspondent in Lebanon and Israel, further delineates the two countries in this provocative, absorbing memoir cum political and social analysis. A condensed, incisive history of the Middle East is proffered, as well as personal reflections on his 10-year sojourn: the issue of Friedman’s Jewishness in Beirut, the fact that he was the Times ‘s first Jewish reporter in Israel, the bombing of his apartment in Beirut by the PLO, which took the lives of his Lebanese news assistant’s children. A top-flight observer and interpreter, the author elucidates the complex religious factions obstructing Lebanese and Israeli politics; the agendas of various posturing, media-loving Arab and Israeli leaders; the perversity of daily life in “Wild West Beirut”; the wanton murder in Lebanon of U.S. marines and Palestinian refugees; America’s fascination with Israel; the waning romance between Israeli and American Jews; and the Palestinian intifada.

• The Fugu Plan

If someone who is rich and powerful comes to you for a favor, you don’t persecute him – you help him. Having such a person indebted to you is a great insurance policy.

There was one nation that did treat the Jews as if they were powerful and rich. The Japanese never had much exposure to Jews, and knew very little about them. In 1919 Japan fought alongside the anti-Semitic White Russians against the Communists. At that time the White Russians introduced the Japanese to the book, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The Japanese studied the book and, according to all accounts, naively believed its propaganda. Their reaction was immediate and forceful – they formulated a plan to encourage Jewish settlement and investment into Manchuria. People with such wealth and power as the Jews possess, the Japanese determined, are exactly the type of people with whom we want to do business!

The Japanese called their plan for Jewish settlement “The Fugu Plan.” The “fugu” is a highly poisonous blowfish. After the toxin-containing organs are painstakingly removed, it is used as a food in Japan, and is considered an exquisite delicacy. If it is not prepared carefully, however, its poison can kill a person.

The Japanese saw the Jews as a nation with highly valuable potential, but, as with the fugu, in order to take advantage of that potential, they had to be extremely careful. Otherwise, the Japanese thought, the plan would backfire and the Jews would annihilate Japan with their awesome power.

The Japanese were allies of the Nazis, yet they allowed thousands of European refugees – including the entire Mirrer Yeshivah – to enter Shanghai and Kobe during World War II. They welcomed these Jews into their country, not because they bore any great love for the Jews, but because they believed that Jews had access to enormous resources and amazingly influential power, which could greatly benefit Japan.

If anti-Semites truly believe that Jews rule the world, why don’t they all relate to Jews like the Japanese did?

The fact that Jews are generally treated as outcasts proves that people do not really believe that Jews are anywhere near as wealthy or powerful as they claim. It proves that anti-Semites do not take their own propaganda seriously.

• The Desert Queen, Janet Wallach

To Sir Mark Sykes, the pre-WWI British Foreign Office Arabist, “that damned fool,” Miss Bell, created an “uproar” wherever she went in the Middle East and was “the terror of the desert.” Three social seasons were all a young lady of good family was allotted to snare a husband. Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) had thrice failed and received the consolation prize, a trip to Teheran to visit her uncle, the British envoy there. After that, she could not be kept close to the dank family manse in Northumbria but was drawn to the sun-drenched Middle East. Dominated even there by her Victorian father, head of a family-owned ironworks, she was denied permission to marry a moneyless diplomat. She refused?to her later regret?a married lover in the military and assuaged her disappointment by pressing British interests in Arab lands east of Suez, becoming in effect the maker of postwar Iraq. The first woman to earn a first-class degree in modern history at Oxford, she wrote seven influential books on the Middle East and, following WWI, was named oriental secretary to the British High Commission in Iraq. Not just another book about an eccentric lady traveler, this colorful, romantic biography tells of a woman with an inexhaustible passion for place that did not always substitute successfully for continuing heartbreak. Despite some maudlin passages, Wallach, coauthor with her husband, John Wallach, of Arafat, vividly evokes a memorable personality.

• Discovery, Wallace Stegner

An undistinguished writing professor at Stanford when he was commissioned by the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) in 1955 to write “an approved history of the oil venture’s early days,” future Pulitzer Prize-winner Stegner (1909-1993) makes a fabulous tale out of what could have been a sterile (or sycophantic) history of the early years of Middle Eastern oil drilling, replete with Texas wildcatters, British nobility, Bedouin raiders and Saudi princes. After initial negotiations between Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud and the Standard Oil Company of California, which had an odd hunch that oil might be found in King Saud’s barren, backward land, Stegner chronicles the construction of the first wells (which, strangely, produced disappointing yields), the political and corporate skirmishes (with occasional bombing) that followed, World War II and the end of the “frontier” in 1945. Though one wonders at the verisimilitude of the writing (many accounts fit quite neatly into Stegner’s world, a folksy blend of Mark Twain and Ogden Nash where “a breed loud, tough, strong, rowdy, good-natured, and superbly adapted” safeguard the outposts of civilization), a notable lack of corporate boosterism (which apparently led Aramco to bury it) gives the account a veneer of honesty. Published for the first time in the U.S., this account should prove fascinating for historians, industry insiders and anyone who wants a closer look at the source of their last fill-up.

• The Charged Border, Where Whales and Humans Meet, Jim Nollman

(The title I was given was “The Cove”. This is what I found that matched the description.)

After a dolphin roundup that has darkened a cove with blood in the Sea of Japan, we follow a diver below the ocean as he cuts through a giant net surrounding hundreds of dolphins awaiting certain death and sets them free. We watch as severely depressed patients are bundled into dry suits and dropped into the Irish Sea to swim with wild dolphins, which strengthens their will to live almost immediately. In the Arctic the author makes music, luring gray whales trapped under the ice to safety. Off the coast of Alaska, a pod of humpback whales sleep, bobbing in the waves, the warts and bumps along their snouts reflecting the light of the occluded sun. Near British Columbia we swim with an orca mother whose captive daughter – seven times pregnant and without a living offspring – is the property of a San Diego oceanarium. In The Charged Border we follow Jim Nollman’s adventures in four of the world’s oceans to study whale and dolphin vocalizations. From these encounters we glimpse an ancient common heritage and evidence of cetacean self-awareness, a reality that promises a new environmental consciousness for us all.

• Devil in White City, Erik Larsen

Not long after Jack the Ripper haunted the ill-lit streets of 1888 London, H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett) dispatched somewhere between 27 and 200 people, mostly single young women, in the churning new metropolis of Chicago; many of the murders occurred during (and exploited) the city’s finest moment, the World’s Fair of 1893. Larson’s breathtaking new history is a novelistic yet wholly factual account of the fair and the mass murderer who lurked within it. Bestselling author Larson (Isaac’s Storm) strikes a fine balance between the planning and execution of the vast fair and Holmes’s relentless, ghastly activities. The passages about Holmes are compelling and aptly claustrophobic; readers will be glad for the frequent escapes to the relative sanity of Holmes’s co-star, architect and fair overseer Daniel Hudson Burnham, who managed the thousands of workers and engineers who pulled the sprawling fair together 0n an astonishingly tight two-year schedule. A natural charlatan, Holmes exploited the inability of authorities to coordinate, creating a small commercial empire entirely on unpaid debts and constructing a personal cadaver-disposal system. This is, in effect, the nonfiction Alienist, or a sort of companion, which might be called Homicide, to Emile Durkheim’s Suicide. However, rather than anomie, Larson is most interested in industriousness and the new opportunities for mayhem afforded by the advent of widespread public anonymity. This book is everything popular history should be, meticulously recreating a rich, pre-automobile America on the cusp of modernity, in which the sale of “articulated” corpses was a semi-respectable trade and serial killers could go well-nigh unnoticed.

• Dancing Girls of Lahore, Louise Brown

*Starred Review* Heera Mandi, the ancient red-light district of the Punjabi city of Lahore, Pakistan, is as distant as the moon from most Western experience, yet sociologist Brown renders an intimate portrait of one family there that is compelling in its strangeness and its humanity. Shuttling for months at a time between Heera Mandi and her middle-class world of Birmingham, England, Brown details the goings-on of Maha, her five children, and the people and places in their tiny universe. Maha, a fading singer-dancer-courtesan in her midthirties, must now depend on her eldest daughters to join the trade to help shore up the family’s shrinking finances: Nisha, 14, who would literally rather die than come of age; Nena, 12, who appears to embrace the business with enthusiasm; and Ariba, 11, a dark-skinned pariah who hovers like a ghost over the household. To that end, Maha is busy making arrangements to sell Nena’s virginity to a wealthy sheikh in Dubai. The family might have been spared this dilemma with help from Maha’s husband, Adnan, but he is too drug addled and distracted with his other wife, Mumtaz, to care. Brown is unsparing in relating the casual violence Maha and her children inflict on one another, and that befalls them from their circumstances, but she also can’t help but be invested in their futures. Readers of this excellent account will feel the same way.

• Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond

Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist’s answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye–and his heart–belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.

• Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers

Now in its fifth edition, Diffusion of Innovations is a classic work on the spread of new ideas. It has sold 30,000 copies in each edition and will continue to reach a huge academic audience.

In this renowned book, Everett M. Rogers, professor and chair of the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico, explains how new ideas spread via communication channels over time. Such innovations are initially perceived as uncertain and even risky. To overcome this uncertainty, most people seek out others like themselves who have already adopted the new idea. Thus the diffusion process consists of a few individuals who first adopt an innovation, then spread the word among their circle of acquaintances–a process which typically takes months or years. But there are exceptions: use of the Internet in the 1990s, for example, may have spread more rapidly than any other innovation in the history of humankind. Furthermore, the Internet is changing the very nature of diffusion by decreasing the importance of physical distance between people. The fifth edition addresses the spread of the Internet, and how it has transformed the way human beings communicate and adopt new ideas.

• To the End of the Land, David Grossman

Acclaimed Israeli author Grossman serves up a powerful meditation on war, friendship, and family. Instead of celebrating her son Ofer’s discharge from the Israeli Army, Ora finds her life turned upside down and inside out when he reenlists and is sent back to the front for a major offensive. Unable to bear the thought of sitting alone waiting for the “notifiers” to bring her bad news, the recently separated Ora decides to hike in the Galilee, where she will be both anonymous and inaccessible. Joined by her estranged best friend and former lover Avram, a recluse who never recovered from the brutality he experienced as a POW during the Yom Kippur War, she narrates the story of her doomed marriage to Ilan and her often arduous journey as a mother. As the tension mounts, she talks compulsively about Ofer, as if telling his story will protect him and keep him alive for both herself and for Avram, the biological father he has never met. As Ora and Avram travel back and forth through time via shared memories, the toll exacted by living in a land and among a people constantly at war is excruciatingly evident. Grossman, whose own son was killed during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, writes directly from the heart in this scorching antiwar novel.

• Come, Tell Me How You Live, Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie’s memoirs about her travels to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan Agatha Christie was already well known as a crime writer when she accompanied her husband, Max Mallowan, to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s. She took enormous interest in all his excavations, and when friends asked what her strange life was like, she decided to answer their questions in this delightful book. First published in 1946, Come, Tell Me How You Live is now reissued in B format. It gives a charming picture of Agatha Christie herself, and is, as Jacquetta Hawkes concludes in her Introduction, ‘a pure pleasure to read’.

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Movies

• Letters to Juliet (Vanessa Redgrave’s last movie)

When a young American travels to the city of Verona, home of the star-crossed lover Juliet Capulet of Romeo and Juliet fame, she joins a group of volunteers who respond to letters to Juliet seeking advice about love. After answering one letter dated 1951, she inspires its author to travel to Italy in search of her long-lost love and sets off a chain of events that will bring a love into both their lives unlike anything they ever imagined.

• Bottle Shock

“Bottle Shock” explores the birth of California’s Napa wine industry, and their triumph over the French at the 1976 Paris Tastings.

• There Will be Blood

A sprawling epic about family, greed, corruption, and the pursuit of the American dream. Set in the booming West coast oil fields at the turn of the 20th century, “There Will Be Blood” follows the rise of rugged prospector Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) who becomes an independent oilman after hitting it rich with the strike of a lifetime. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film is inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel “Oil!”

• No Country for Old Men

Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande. (Ya gotta see it, if you haven’t, evp)

• Hannibal Lector Movie – Control Room

A documentary on perception of the United States’s war with Iraq, with an emphasis on Al Jazeera’s coverage.

• The Syrian Bride

A woman who is stuck in the middle: between her traditional, burka-wearing mother and her modern, cigarette-smoking daughter; between her pro-Syrian father and her expatriate brothers; between the past and the future.

• The Lemon Tree

Salma Zidane lives in a tiny Palestinian village on the West Bank. She is 45 years old and a widow. Her children have left home, and she is alone. When the Israeli minister of defense builds a house on the other side of the green line, Selma’s lemon trees come to the attention of his bodyguards. Her trees are a security risk. They can hide terrorists and impede the bodyguards in their work. In any case, these Palestinian lemon trees simply get in the way of the powerful Minister’s superior security needs. The lemon trees were planted by Salma’s family many generations ago–they are synonymous with Salma’s family history. Salma gets herself a lawyer. But Ziad Daud is up against a battery of clever military lawyers, all of whom are covered by the top brass. It’s an unfair battle, that isn’t made any easier when the 45-year-old widow falls in love with her lawyer, a divorcee ten years her junior–a scandal as far as her Palestinian neighbors are concerned. On the other side of the grove, Salma’s struggle to keep her trees has not gone unnoticed. The defence minister’s wife, who has become more and more lonely and unhappy as her husband’s political career has blossomed, feels increasingly drawn to Salma as the unfair battle between her husband and their Palestinian neighbors drags on. An invisible bond connects these two very different women who find themselves on the brink of a new phase in their lives.

• A View from a Grain of Sand

Combining verite footage, interviews and rare archival material, VIEW FROM A GRAIN OF SAND is a harrowing, thought-provoking, yet intimate portrait of Afghan women’s history over the last 30 years – from the rule of King Zahir Shah in the 1960′s to the current Hamid Karzai government. Told through the eyes of three Afghan women – a doctor, a teacher and women’s rights activist -this documentary tells the story of how war, international interference and the rise of political Islam has stripped Afghan women of rights and freedom. Together with rarely seen archival footage, their powerful stories provide illuminating context for Afghanistan’s current situation and the ongoing battle women face to gain even basic human rights.

• The Seventh Seal

In medieval Sweden a knight returns from war only to find a ravaged homeland. He meets up with a group of travelling players and eventually confronts the embodiment of death with whom he engages in a game of chess.

Jordan, the Peacemaker

October 24, 25, 26

Except for reading Queen Noor’s book a few years ago, I never knew anything about Jordan. Turns out, it’s action central in the Middle East, and has been critical to events here for the last hundred years. I’m sitting at a resort in Aqaba, on the Red Sea.  Israel and Egypt are clearly visible across the narrow water. The border of Saudi Arabia is 5 km from our front door. Jordan also borders Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, far up in the Northwest.

The Arab independence movement, led by Emir Faisal, his brother Abdullah and helped by TE Lawrence (as documented in Lawrence of Arabia) drove from Aqaba to Damascus during WWI, driving out the Ottoman Empire from the region. Their expectation from this effort, which helped the British in the War since the Ottomans were allied with Germany, was a free Arab nation “an Arab war, waged and led by Arabs for an Arab aim in Arabia” (Lawrence.) But there were many conflicting interests. Some land went to  Abdullah, but France and Britain became protectors of the rest of the Middle East, and the Balfour Declaration (1917) announced Britain’s support  for the eventual formation of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.

Abdullah became king of Jordan when it was declared independent  in 1948. He was assassinated in 1951, then  succeeded after two years by his grandson King Hussein, who ruled until 1999. Hussein was a remarkable leader, who managed to stay neutral between the US and Russia, and who looked for compromises for the Palestine-Israeli situation during his rule.  In the 50’s, he suggested that the Muslim countries accept the Israel borders and declare peace. the other countries accused him of being an agent of Britain and refused. He allowed Palestinians to become full citizens of Jordan – the only Muslim country in the Middle East to do that.

Hussein was succeeded by his son Abdullah when he died in 1999. There are large pictures of the two of them everywhere.

Sites

There are a couple of really interesting things here. Jerash is the best example of a Roman city in the Middle East – preserved by the desert climate. The most fun, by far, was the Dead Sea. We stayed at a resort and were able to swim – or maybe float is a better word.  The Dead Sea is the lowest level body of water in the world. It’s salinity is nine times that of the ocean, so nothing can live in it, but everything floats in it! As you walk out, you can feel the buoyancy.  It’s important to float on your back, and not splash, to make sure no water gets in your eyes or mouth. But then, when its time to stop and go back in it’s virtually impossible to stand up. Like a turtle on its back, you keep struggling to get upright, then just roll back into position.

Petra is an amazing site – a canyon that snakes downhill for 4 km, its walls studded with amazing carvings of columns, animals and ancient religious icons. It’s heyday was the last 500 years BC, when the Nabateans used it as a burial site for their upper class, building the carvings and clever tunnels to divert and store water. The walls are striated with red, black and beige, and light plays dramatically down the narrow canyon. Fabulous!

Comments from Jordanians

-       [On Syria]  Over the years, Syrians were not to be trusted. There was a huge change when Fayez Assad died. He was only interested in the military, so technically they were way behind.  Bashir wants to build infrastructure, and has done much to bring the country up to date. Ten years ago, if a Jordanian went to Syria, sometimes he would never come back. You don’t hear about that anymore.

-       [On the First Gulf War] Saddam Hussein was in a difficult situation. There had    been an agreement among the Arab states on the cost of oil and Kuwait had undercut that. Saddam Hussein called the prince of Kuwait and asked him to stop underselling; the prince said no. Within 6 hours Iraqi troops occupied Kuwait. King Hussein of Jordan was trying to convince Saddam to withdraw, but Saudi Arabia convinced the US to come in. Kuwait gave money to Gorbachev/USSR to prevent them from getting involved, or from putting pressure on the US.

-       [What does Jordan want for Iraq today] They want peace. In general, Saddam Hussein was not popular in Jordan, but it is generally agreed that Iraqis need a strong leader. Hussein was such a person. It is not a country that would do well in a democracy.

-       [On women covering] The issue is not whether to wear a head covering or not. Covering the hair is a must for an Islamic woman.  The issue is whether the face and hands should be covered.  About 70 % of the imams interpret the Koran to say that only the hair need be covered.

 

Aleppo and Northwest Syria

October 18 – 22

These days are a heady mix of historic sites  (including mosques, churches and ruins,) observations of Aleppo (Aleppo DIY,) and conversations with local people.  The area covered is North to the border of Turkey, and West to the Mediterranean.

Historic Sites

As in the rest of the country, the historic sites are many and significant. A unique perspective is to consider them by the historical date of their prominence, rather than as the journey led us.

Ebla Ruins (c 2000 BC) Ebla was one of the most powerful city-states in Syria in the late third millennium BC, controlling most of northwestern Syria until it was sacked (~2250 BC,)  rising again briefly, until the Hittites came in 1600 BC. Most interestingly it lay undiscovered for centuries, until a farmer found a statue in 1955. Italian teams, under the archeologist Paul Metier, have been digging since then. Some 60 or so were actually on site when we arrived, brushing carefully, sifting dirt through leather baskets. It was fascinating to watch them – unfortunately, a few minutes after we came their day ended (10:30AM) and they were gone in a few minutes, buzzing away on motorbikes. It is thought that this area had a formal language since 5000 BC. Over 15,000 clay tablets have been unearthed in a Sumerian dialect, providing information on economics, local administration, and dictionaries of other languages.

Ugarit (c 1800 BC) Once the most important city on the Mediterranean coast, Ugarit is considered the birthplace of one of the world’s earliest alphabets, and the world’s first international port. Evidence suggests that a settlement here was trading with Cyprus and Mesopotamia in the 3^rd millennium BC. In 2000-1800 BC Ugarit traded with Egypt, exporting timber and bronze. Ugarit became wealthy and innovative during this period; wealthy houses had piped water systems and drainage. The alphabet developed here was a huge improvement on cuneiform and hieroglyphics, both of which used hundreds of pictorial images. The Ugarit language consisted of 30 letters that represented sounds. Additionally, the first use of written music correlated with words (a musical score) was found here. Like Ebla, this area had been undiscovered until an accidental find in 1928.

Maalula (c 325 AD) A very early site of the Christian church, this is the only place in the world where the Aramaic language (the language of Christ) is still spoken. In the church of St.Sergius (and early Christian martyr) we heard the Lord’s Prayer spoken in Aramaic. There are some fabulous icons in the church. In addition, on this site another early Christian, St. Thecla, was being chased by Roman soldiers. Legend has it that the rock was struck by lightening and a cleft appeared through which she escaped. The cleft is still there, now lit by electric lights and dotted with trash. [The day we come here, bands are playing and young girls stand on the stairs to the church holding flowers. Alas, it is not for us, but for Bashir Assad who is scheduled to come by with Hugo Chavez, on a visit from Venzuela. Rosemary and Liz stand on the balcony while Audrey and Nancy prowl the streets below, getting in a good position for photos. We wait for almost an hour, but they don’t appear, so we finally leave. What a shame to miss them!!]

Hama (c 600 AD) Another ancient city that likely dates back to the Neolithic Age, then held by the Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, etc. The Romans built a series of water wheels (Noria) on the Orontes river – some are 20 M tall, and still operate in the summer. Most recently, Hama was the site of the 1982 massacre of 10,000-25,000 people. The Muslim Brotherhood (which had been declared illegal since a 1980 assassination attempt on Hafez Assad, father of the current president,) had removed the Ba’athist (Assad’s party) leaders fro town and declared it to be free of the Assad government. Within a month, the government began shelling the city and said that anyone who remained would be killed. Most of the city was destroyed along with many mosques, churches and historic sites. Somehow, in spite of this sad story, we manage to find an old shop where linens are made by hand, and we all buy some.

Mosaic Museum at Maarat Al-Numan (c 600-700 AD) An absolutely wonderful collection of mosaics from the floors of homes of the “Dead Cities,” clusters of now deserted Byzantine towns from the 5^th and 6^th century. In addition to the abstract and floral patterns, there are many depictions of animals: running, nursing, attacking and killing other animals. According to our guide, all of these animals were found in the area, And included elephants, lions, tigers, and leopards. Enchanting!

Aleppo Citadel and Krac des Chevaliers (c 1100-1200 AD) One of the most important stories of this region is that of the coming of the crusaders and their century reign before being chased out by Saladdin and others. The Citadel in Aleppo stands on a high mound in the southeastern part of the city. The first fortifications were probably built on this site in the 3^rd century BC, but its most important use was as a power base for the Muslims during Crusades. It was never conquered by the crusaders. Not so the Krac des Chevaliers, built originally by the emir of Homs in 1031. This castle stands high in the mountains and could control the flow of goods from the Mediterranean to inland Syria. It was first attacked by the crusaders in 1099, and they remained in power there until 1271. During this time the castle was enlarged by the Knights Hospitaller into what has been called the “finest castle in the world (T.E. Lawrence.) At it’s peak, 2000 people were garrisoned there, along with their horses. It is in great shape, and the significant rooms are identifiable and interesting.

Aleppo DIY

Aleppo is a jewel – a center of commerce since Roman times and a key stop on the silk route, as it is positioned between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean – and it is still vital and interesting today. We spend lots of time in the old souks –  hundreds of shops  on covered cobblestoned alleys snake around the old mosque, and still the place to shop for the locals.  There are spices, textiles, brocades, gold and silver, carpets and….soap.  This region is famous for its olive oil soap, which comes in various qualities – the best being good enough to use as shampoo. There are huge towers of the bars in the soap shops. Using it takes some getting used to – it’s greenish brown, and looks that way until it’s rinsed off. The souks are crowded and exciting. Several of the shops we go into give us tea to drink (in hopes that we’ll buy something, and we often do.) Along the narrow lanes we often have to hunker against buildings as donkey carts and minivans go by.

To the Northwest is the Christian section, and here is the real action of the city. There are shops doing metal making (a cacophony of sounds on that street), roasting vegetables, making bread (one baker tosses Rosemary a large flatbread which she has to bounce in her hands a few times to let it cool enough that she can hold it), making pizza, making ice.  The streets here are also filled with people. Most interesting are the many women in black abiyahs – often with sheer black veils completely covering their faces and black gloves.

People are generally OK with having their pictures taken, but one man says no to Rosemary, then takes her picture with his phone and shows it to her.

The drives around Aleppo are also informative. The country is very dry (the water supply in the country has dropped 50% in the last 6 years, and the desert is encroaching quickly in the north.) There are thousands of pistachio trees (which don’t appear to be irrigated) and olive trees. Along the Mediterranean coast are many high rise apartments that appear to be only partially completed, but yet are already partly occupied – so there will be a row of empty cement windows, then a couple that are painted, have curtains and windows and laundry hanging out, then more empty ones. Strange. Audrey says she has seen the same in Egypt.

Comments from Syrians

Syria has been worrisome. People say constantly that they don’t know or care about politics, but a few share comments:

-       The increased number of women with head covering comes from the increase in poverty and in religious extremism.

-       Syria has ~1 million Palestinians and 1 million Iraqis. The Palestinians are mostly poor, yet will not take the lowest paying jobs. The Iraqis are mostly rich, but are still a burden on the country.

-       If we’re not careful, we’ll be like Lebanon.

-       A man tells the story of a Palestinian friend. In 1948, when he was six, he was loaded onto a train and told by the Israeli’s that they were taking them away to protect them from the Arabs, and that they would return shortly. He was shipped to Aleppo. His mother had been taken off at an earlier city and it was a year until they were reunited. Some Palestinians still keep the keys to their homes after 60 years.

-       One very intelligent, well-spoken Syrian explained that he hates the Israelis. He sometimes is forced to deal with them in business and cannot bring himself to do it. He understands that he is probably wrong to feel this way, and he hopes the next generation is better, but he himself cannot change.

-       Today’s Syria is going backwards in terms of education for women. Theoretically education is mandatory to the 9^th grade, but many poor people never even register the birth of their children, and then never send the girls to school at all.

-       Now we are opened to tourists, so it has become a problem that many non-tourists can come in to the country. But, we know who they are, we follow them. [How do you know who they are?] It’s not my business. Security does.