Archaeologists in Syria discover Byzantine mosaic

by Sean McLachlan on

Just when you thought all news coming out of Syria was bad, an archaeology team has discovered a Byzantine mosaic in a medieval church.

The mosaic was discovered last week at the Deir Sounbol Church on al-Zawieh Mountain. Syrian investigators say the mosaic measures 4×5 meters (13×16 ft.). While portions are damaged or missing, floral and geometric shapes are clearly visible and there are inscriptions in Greek. These are prayers that include the names of the owner of the church and the person who supervised the creation of the mosaic.

The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Long after the Western Empire collapsed, the Byzantines continued Roman culture with a distinctive Greek flair. Syria was Byzantine territory and was the battlefront in the Empire’s grueling war with Persia.

The war weakened both sides so much that they were easy pickings when the followers of Mohammed burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century. Persia quickly fell, but Byzantium held on, shrinking gradually until the end came in 1453. In that year the capital Constantinople, modern Istanbul, fell to the Ottoman Turks.

One of Byzantium’s greatest achievements were its sumptuous mosaics. Made of little colored tiles called tesserae, they depict elaborate scenes and some have tesserae made of gold. A copyright-free image of the Syrian mosaics was not available. You can see them here. This picture, courtesy of Berthold Werner, shows a mosaic floor in Jerash, Jordan. It’s interesting in that it contains swastikas, a symbol of peace and harmony for centuries before the Nazis twisted its meaning.

I love the fact that Syrian archaeologists are continuing to dig despite the chaos and repression going on in their country. These guys obviously love their work and won’t let anything stop them from doing what they feel is important. It reminds me of a literary journal that was published in Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war. The offices were right next to the no-man’s land between two factions, and yet they still managed to publish literature on a regular basis. The name of the journal escapes me. Any Lebanese out there remember it?

Syria unrest: will there be another massacre in Hama?

by Sean McLachlan on

Syrian army tanks ‘moving towards Hama’.

Just another headline about unrest in the Middle East. I’ve read so many, but this one made me shudder. One thing travel does for you is make the world more than just a headline. I’ve been to Hama.

I visited Syria back in 1994 as a young college graduate with a backpack, a bit of Arabic, and no responsibilities. I spent a month exploring archaeological sites, chatting in smoky cafes, and debating religion in the cool shade of mosque courtyards. Syria is a fascinating and welcoming place, and if the regime of Bashar al-Assad gets ousted and peace returns, I highly recommend you go.

I marveled at the beautiful Umayyad Mosque in Damascus before going to a nearby cafe to listen to a hakawati, a traditional storyteller, recite his tales to a rapt audience. I looked out over the green hills of Lebanon from the turrets of Crac des Chevaliers castle and took a dusty bus ride to the oasis of Palmyra. And for two days I stayed in Hama to see the famous noria, or waterwheels, as seen here in this Wikimedia Commons photo.

There was something strange about Hama. It was supposed to be an old city yet most of the buildings looked new. Plus the tourist map on the wall of my hotel lobby was wrong. I’d copied parts of it into my notebook to help me get around but soon found the names of the streets had changed. Even their layout had changed. It was like a map of a different city.

Then I saw the same map in the lobby of another hotel, and in an antique shop. One night I asked the manager what was going on. He looked around to make sure nobody was within earshot and whispered, “This map shows Hama before the massacre.”I’d heard of that. The Muslim Brotherhood had been fighting against the Syrian government for several years and Hama was their main base. They attacked government targets and the government hauled away anyone who seemed suspicious. Most victims were innocent people caught in the crossfire.

One night in 1982 a Syrian army patrol discovered the local Muslim Brotherhood headquarters and a firefight broke out. The Brotherhood called for a general uprising. Fighting flared up all over the city. Hafez al-Assad, then Prime Minister and father of the current Prime Minister, ordered the armed forces to surround Hama. The air force dropped bombs while tanks and artillery shelled the city. Then the troops went in, shooting anything that moved. Nobody knows how many people died. Estimates range from 10,000 to 40,000, and all sources agree that most were civilians.

Now the Syrian army is moving towards Hama again. The son is continuing the work of his father.

This morning I flipped through my old travel diary, reliving the time I spent in Hama and Syria: the conversations, the hikes, the sense of wonder of a young man on his first year-long travel adventure. One thing that struck me was that of all the Syrians that diary mentions, none of them have entirely faded from my memory.

I remember the kindly old man who nursed me back to health after my first bad case of food poisoning. And the artist who drew a sketch of me that I still have. Then there was that wisecracking tailor who changed money at black market rates, building a nest egg of hard currency for reasons he’d never divulge. And the metalheads who introduced me to Syria’s underground music scene. It’s strange to think of those headbangers as forty-something fathers, but I suppose, like me, they are.

Or maybe they’ve been slaughtered.

None of those people liked the regime. The business owners hung a picture of Hafez al-Assad on the walls, just like they have a picture of Bashar nowadays. In a dictatorship that’s the price of doing business. But once the customers left and it was just us in a back room chatting over tea, their voices would lower and they’d complain about how the al-Assad family had a stranglehold on power.

The metalheads were louder in their protests and suffered regular police harassment. Since even their concerts were illegal they felt they had nothing to lose. They wanted to live life the way they chose. A few beatings and nights in jail was the price of a few hours of freedom.

I traveled all over the Middle East back then–Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Palestine, Iran–and heard the same stories of frustration and anger in dozens of cities. The only thing that surprised me about the so-called Arab Revolution of 2011 was that it took so long.

In some places it’s succeeded; in Syria it looks like it will fail. Syria doesn’t have much oil so besides a few feeble sanctions, it’s doubtful the West will do much. Bashar al-Assad will imprison or kill anyone who speaks out against him and the protests will be suppressed.

Hama may be leveled again. Thousands may die–they may already be dying–and the city destroyed. After a time new shops and new hotels will open. Their owners will grit their teeth and hang a photo of Prime Minister Bashar al-Assad behind the counter. Then, I hope, they’ll pull out a worn old map of Hama the way it looked before 1982, and hang it right next to him.

Q & A with travel and food writer Zora O’Neill

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Zora O’Neill is a travel and food writer, an editor, and the co-founder (with Tamara Reynolds) of an underground Astoria supper club so successful that it eventually spawned Forking Fantastic!, a cookbook and entertaining guide.

Zora has authored guidebooks for Lonely Planet, Moon, and Rough Guides. Her expertise runs from Egypt to Amsterdam to her home state of New Mexico and on to the Yucatán, though her range of interests under the umbrella of food and travel is infectiously broad, sincerely passionate, and very fun to read. (Want evidence? Check out Zora’s observations on Greek food and drink and her “walkabout” ode to various culinary delights of Queens.)

Q: Describe your profession.

A: I’ve been calling myself a “freelance writer” since I quit my full-time job in 2000, but it’s only in the past four or so years that I’ve really felt like I’ve grown into the job, in that the bulk of my income really comes from writing. I usually tell people I’m a guidebook author, although that’s only part of it. It’s just what I’ve been doing the longest, and whatever reputation I have as a writer has really come from that.

I’m also an editor. It’s work I really like doing, so I always have some on the side, even though at this point I could probably manage without it. It’s a break from staring at an empty page, and it helps me feel like I’m actually helping people, using my freelance word powers for good! And it helps me keep sharp on editing my own work.

Q: From the outside, it looks as if you’ve managed to craft the perfect career, equal parts travel and food. How do your endeavors actually settle on the travel/food divide? Or is your personal hybrid of the two so far developed at this point that you no longer attempt to differentiate?

A: For the most part, it has been an organic development and works out just fine–although my blog has always been a little schizophrenic, and so never really fit the “travel blog” or a “food blog” mold. I also had a little bit of an identity crisis last year when Forking Fantastic!, the cookbook I wrote with Tamara Reynolds, was published. For 20 years, cooking had been my sideline, my creative outlet. When I made it my full-time gig, over the year and a half it took to write the book and get it off to the printer, it was on the brink of becoming drudgery. I was really happy to get back to the travel side of things after that, just for the variety. But of course full-time travel writing gets to be a grind too.

I do get the biggest kick out of finding new foods on the road and talking with the people who cook them. The trick is finding a little bit more of an outlet for that, as my guidebooks would bloat horribly in the restaurant sections if I shared all I knew.

Q: You made a break from an academic career. Why did you shift gears? Any regrets?

A: Ah, yes, my secret grad-school past! Lots of people have one, I’ve discovered. I was on track for a PhD in Arabic literature–it had started out as modern Arabic novels, and then I found myself whisked back to pre-Islamic poetry. While I was toiling away on five lines of obscure (but beautiful) sixth-century poetry in the middle of Indiana, the first dot-com wave was ramping up, and I started feeling awfully out of the loop. And then my funding got cut and my department nearly dissolved due to a ridiculous academic feud.

So I took that all as a sign to pack the van and flee to New York City, and I’ve been glad every day since. I’ve used my Arabic skills a bit in the service of guidebook research, and just general travel and picking people’s brains for recipes. And recently, I’ve been thinking about studying it
again, now that the trauma of grad school has finally evaporated.Q: Which destinations do you love the most?

A: Syria! It’s the only place I’ve gone back to repeatedly for fun, and not just for work. Beautiful country, wonderful people and amazing things to eat–surprising spice-road Chinese influences, and food is so local that if you can’t actually see the water, there’s no fish on the menu. And spiffy trains! “Axis of Evil,” my ass.

And I have to give a shoutout to the Yucatán. I was assigned to update a guide there in 2003, a little bit randomly, and I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to get to know such a lovely place in such depth. My ideas about Mexico were limited before I went there. I grew up in New Mexico, so I only knew the border towns. On my first Yucatán trip, I felt pretty dumb: Why had I been racing off to random corners of the world, when this kind of diversity and culture was just over the border?

Q: Name some places you’ve not yet visited and are dying to see.

A: Asia. It’s a gaping hole in my experience. I finally went for the first time last year–to Thailand, Malaysia and Bali, after I happened across some crazy-cheap business-class tickets. Thailand blew my mind. I’d heard Thais were into food, but I truly had no idea to what degree. My husband and I just walked down the street giggling at the bounty. It was also refreshing to go somewhere where I didn’t speak the language at all or have a travel partner who did. Now I need to get to Japan, Vietnam, India, the rest of Indonesia…

I have two fears: doing the long flight in economy, and being forever ruined for eating any kind of Asian food in the U.S. As it is, I always get so depressed when I come back home and try to eat things from places I’ve been, because everything here tastes like such a pale imitation. Our produce has gotten so feeble and tasteless, the spices aren’t fresh, someone decided to leave the lard out for “health” reasons, and so on. Right now, I still at least take a little comfort in Japanese food, and sometimes Indian.

Q: If you could make one meal anywhere in the world with any ingredients, where and what would you choose? Who would you cook & dine with?

A: How to choose? I once had an ambition to taste everything in the world–but checklists make me tired. I’m torn between getting a lesson in Japanese cooking from a random perfectionist old Japanese lady, or making Indian food with Madhur Jaffrey. I taught myself to cook by working my way through one of Jaffrey’s cookbooks, way back in early grad school. (Grad school was great for learning to cook. Department of Education, your grants were not wasted!) I feel like I should pay her back somehow. But either way, I’d like to use some foraged greens. I love learning what’s lying around by the side of the road.

Q: Give us a travel secret.

A: Make your itinerary, then take one thing out of it. Kind of like Coco Chanel’s advice on dressing, where you should take one accessory off before you leave the house. The tendency, especially when you’re going to a new place, is to overplan and try to gobble up everything you can, but you’ll get more out of a place if you slow it down. Related to that, don’t feel like you “should” do anything. I went to Thailand, and went in exactly one temple, for about 10 minutes, and it wasn’t even a famous one. That’s not terrible, is it? (Screams echo from across the Internet…)

Q: What’s next for Zora O’Neill?

A: Next May, I’m off to Morocco with Tamara and a tour operator called Brown & Hudson for a food tour inspired by Forking Fantastic! We’re basically taking our improvisational dinner parties on the road–it should be a great combination of finding cool new ingredients and crashing locals’ houses for dinner!

The tour angle is new for me, and a big jump, since I’ve been writing for independent travelers for so long. But last year I went on a food tour to Syria, and I finally realized the point of guided tours: it’s not to keep you safe or coddled or whatever–it’s to open doors to places you wouldn’t ordinarily get to go. So I’m very excited to be able to set that up for other people, and use all the knowledge I’ve collected over years of traveling. I’m definitely scheming on a trip to the Yucatán too–there’s so much there that can’t fit in the guidebook.

[Image: Peter Moskos]

Adventure travel meets faith: cycling to Mecca for the Hajj

by Sean McLachlan on


Two Muslims from South Africa mixed adventure travel and spirituality this year by cycling to Mecca for the Hajj. Natheem Cairncross, 28 and Imtiyaz Haron, 25, cycled through South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Visa problems with Sudan and Ethiopia meant they had to take a plane from Kenya to Turkey, but that doesn’t lessen their achievement.

In an interview with the BBC, Cairncross said the 6,800-mile journey was a life-changing experience. Both had to sell possessions to raise money for the trip. Cairncross even sold his car. Yes, he had a car and he decided to go by bike.

The Hajj is the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim should do at least once in their lifetime if they are able. Currently the Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai is exhibiting photos and recordings made by Dutch explorer Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in 1885. Check out the link for some amazing early images and eerie recordings made on wax cylinders that had only recently been developed by Thomas Edison.

[Image courtesy Ali Mansuri via Wikimedia Commons]

Weekending: Beirut

by Meg Nesterov on


One of the best things about life as an expat in Turkey is easy access to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with many previously far-flung destinations only a few hours’ flight away. I might not plan a week-long vacation in, say, Kosovo, but if I can be there for Friday happy hour and home Monday morning, why not? My main criteria for choosing weekend trips are easy access, no advance visa required, and access to sights and culture I won’t find in Istanbul. Other than that, I pore over the Turkish Airlines timetable like a Stieg Larsson novel, choose a destination, and start planning.

The place: Beirut, Lebanon

All the travel mags have recently hyped Beirut as the “Paris of the Middle East,” a title the city has long boasted but only recently regained after the 2006 bombings. Now it’s *the* place for nightlife in the Middle East, a hot bed of new construction with luxury hotels opening like the Four Seasons and Le Gray, and a diverse mix of culture (Lebanon has 18 official religions, representing Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and the Islamic Druze sect), where you can often hear church bells and the mosque’s call to prayer on the same corner. The downtown district has been beautifully restored, though it lacks a little soul; the Corniche waterfront is pleasant for strolling among Muslim families and locals drinking tea and smoking nargileh pipes; and the university area of Hamra is dotted with cozy pubs and cafes.

%Gallery-97953%Upgrades

  • As the summer gets more oppressively hot in Turkey, I find myself in search of a beach and despite the fact that Istanbul is surrounded by water, options are slim and expensive. Beirut offers many options for refreshment in the form of beach clubs (really a glorified pool complex with restaurants), where you can also take in the daytime social scene with young Lebanese chatting each other up in the pool with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other (smoking is pretty much the national sport of Lebanon, so be warned). If you’re not wearing stilettos and a bejeweled, designer bikini that probably shouldn’t come into contact with liquid, you’re probably under dressed.
  • The shopping scene downtown has the usual gang of international brands, but nearby Saifi Village has cool boutiques with local, up-and-coming designers. Even more interesting is the Sunday Souq el Ahad flea market, with everything from live chickens to bootleg DVDs to antique clocks, with nary a souvenir or fanny pack in sight. Try saying that about the Grand Bazaar.
  • Expat ease: English is widely spoken and US dollars are used everywhere in addition to Lebanese lira, though getting change in two currencies requires some finely honed math skills. Alcohol is quite readily available and cheaper than in Turkey, with particularly good local wine and laughably cheap duty free prices.

Downgrades

  • With all the hotel openings, the cost of accommodation is pretty steep, with few hotels under $200 in high season and a dearth of good budget options. Looking for a hotel with a pool (a must in summer), I ended up at the Riviera Hotel, where the main draw was the attached beach club and quick walk to Hamra, for $165 a night. Beirut could use a chain like Istanbul’s House Hotels, which has converted historic buildings in trendy neighborhoods into chic and cheap accommodation.
  • As sprawling and inconvenient as Istanbul’s public transportation is, Beirut is even worse with a confusing and rundown bus system and taxi cabs which have no meters (tricky to agree to a price in advance when you don’t speak Arabic or understand what price you should pay). Service taxis are shared cars most locals use to get around, but they are virtually indistinguishable from private taxis and difficult to navigate, as you have to ask where they are going.
  • Beirut has a handful of good museums and good access to day trips, but otherwise your sightseeing can be done in a day or two, which can leave you for more time for people watching at the beach or at a cafe. Contrasted with Istanbul’s endless array of palaces, museums, historical sights, and markets, Beirut works best as a stop on a larger trip or as a relaxation and nightlife-centric getaway.

Getting there

Beirut International Airport is served by flights from Europe and the Middle East; budget carriers Air Baltic and Pegasus connect with most of Europe, and bmi flies from 7 cities in the US via London. Most countries get a free 1-month visa on arrival. There’s no public transit from the airport; arrange a taxi pickup with your hotel, or try to bargain to around $30 – 40. Along with Syria and a dozen other countries, Lebanon will not allow entry to anyone with an Israeli passport stamp, but you shouldn’t have many problems going into Israel with a Lebanese stamp.

Make it a week

Beirut is an exciting, sad, glamorous, and hopeful city, all at the same time and depending on your perspective. It would be worthwhile to extend your trip to explore more of Lebanon or combine with a visit to Syria (also a “go there before it gets discovered” destination but requires you apply for a visa in advance).