Asha

Travelling...

I wonder if most of you have even stopped reading this blog because of a lack of update. Soon after exams finished, I left for Syria and Jordan and then came back to Cairo for like a day and then headed out to Pakistan. Well not really in Pakistan at the moment. I’m in Abu Dhabi right now.

Don’t even know where to start. Well I’ll just take the chronological approach. Ok so after exams a friend (Sauleh) and I left for Syria. The Syrian embassy in Cairo had been nice about our visas so were like oh…this will be easy breeze. Landed in Damascus and the dude at the immigration just told pointed to another officer and asked us to go there and that other officer just held our passports for a while he flirted with another female officer and then went to this other office with Sauleh’s passport. To cut a looong story short, they decided that they weren’t going to give Sauleh back his passport. Said they’ll keep it and we’ll have to go to the Department of Immigration (from now on referred to as hell hole) to get it. So I was like hold on, wtf? I mean we have a visa and everything. So there is me trying to put on my Arabic charm and asking them to at least give us a freaking receipt for the passport. So we got the receipt but as I was making too much noise for their taste they decided they were going to keep my passport too. Also we landed on a Thursday night and the weekend is Friday, Saturday and we had tickets for Amman leaving on Monday (early morning). The dude at the airport said that our passports would be at the hell-hole on Saturday and that it was open that day. A great beginning to our trip,eh?

However, the horror doesn’t end here. So the next day we’re in the Ummayad Mosque in Old Damascus and we’re at the Shrine on Imam Hussain (the Prophet’s grandson) and guess what happens. My wallet gets stolen out of my freaking purse. Not only did it have quite a bit of cash in it. It had my credit card as well (the ONE time I didn’t take it out before going to somewhere unfamiliar). So I ask the care taker there if he saw anything and when he said nope….I just plopped on the floor and balled my eyes out. The whole passport deal had been stressful enough and this was the freaking last thing I needed. A lot of people came around and asked Sauleh what happened. Most of them were Shia travel groups from Iran and I guess they were pretty appalled that someone would do such a thing at a place like that. Sauleh then saw my wallet tossed in a corner. All the cash was gone but I at least I had my credit card. However, after seeing me ball my eyes out, this old couple comes up to us and the old dude practically offers us all the money he had in his pocket and then this other dude comes up and talks to me in Arabic for a good 20 minutes, trying to calm me down and such and then offers us some money, and says it was a gift and we couldn’t refuse. So there was humanity alive somewhere.

The next morning we went to the Hell-hole and the dude just said, "come tomorrow…we don’t have your passports" and I was like aaaaaaaaaaah. So we go back the next day (Sunday), and they finally have our passports but they were like oh there is some stuff we need to do. And guy 1 gives our passports to guy 2 who gets guy 3 to sign this register and then guy 3 tells us to come tomorrow and I was like "NO, I have a freaking flight and I NEED my passport." So guy 3 sends us to guy 4 and 5 who tell us to come in about 1.5 hours to get our passports. And then when we do they tell us to come tomorrow and then you can imagine my reaction. So after talking to guy 4,5 and 6 making photocopies, getting some papers, getting stuff written, getting signature from guy 6, we go back to guy 4 and he is like., "Ok your passports will be sent to the airport." At that moment I thought I was going to shoot them in the head instead I started crying and shouting hysterically saying, I needed my passport now. So guy 4 freaks out, the entire office is looking at me and the bajillion other people who are there. So guy 4 takes me to the top dude and he sends us somewhere else and that dude sends us back to the top dude and then some more stamps and signatures and me crying like anything…..we get our passports. Oh ya, to add to all this, no one spoke a word of English. I have no idea what people who don’t speak any Arabic do in a place like this.

Needless to say this was not a pleasant experience. But to add to all this we had a flight in a few hours to Amman but no visa…and we couldn’t get visas at the airport and the last thing we wanted was to lengthen our stay in Syria. Now what happened after will be another really long story but to cut it short we landed in Amman and got out of the airport due to the extensive network of my friend’s dad in Amman.

Ok, so I do realize I’ve only given you a horror story version of Syria. Obviously there were good parts too but I guess the stress of the bad parts overshadows the good ones. Btw I have a question….why do dictators have their pictures hung up everywhere? I swear you couldn’t turn move your head 180 degrees in Damscus without seeing a picture of Bashar al-Assad, I even know how his kids look like!

Some quick good things about Damascus… so much less traffic and pollution than Cairo, fresh juices are great, people on the streets are friendly and don’t bother you or shout "antee min fain" every 2 minutes (where are you from?) and no doubt old Damascus is nice. Also, for those who know what this is….got a chance to go to Syedda Zainab’s moulid for a bit which was interesting.

About Jordan….went to Amman, Dead Sea, Petra, Jerash, Mount Nebo and Madaba. Mount Nebo is the place where Moses is believed to be buried and also the place where he ‘promised the land.’ Standing at the spot with Israel/Palestine about 46km away from you and other parts of Jordan stretched out…you once again start thinking of what land and home and the idea of landless people means and how that fits into Arab nationalism in general. In Jordan we were staying with a friend of mine from high school and no doubt had a lovely time.

These are the last 10/11 days in a nutshell. Have more to say about every experience and obviously have a lot of thoughts about the condition in the Arab world and it future. Oh ya, was in Jordan when Zarqawi was killed. People were actually celebrating that. Jordan and Syria no doubt very different from each other and from Egypt (also the change in dialects can get pretty confusing).

Talking about Egypt, around the time my finals were going on there were huge protests in Cairo regarding the trail of two judges (who basically had said that Mubarak rigged elections) and the trial of the dude who dared run against Mubarak. About 400 people were arrested and detained including lawyers, journalists etc. While all of this was happening the White House was welcoming Mubarak’s son (a likely future president). Needless to say I have plenty of frustrations about American policies and the workings of USAID in Egypt.

Ok this entry is getting looong. I’ll end here. I’ve been told by friends here that blogspot doesn’t work from Pakistan as it was restricted there after the Danish cartoon’s controversy so if I can’t post I’ll e-mail and if you read this and don’t get my e-mails and want to get them…lemme know.

Salam.

posted by mir @ 11:23 AM 0 comments