Kuwait

Addendum

I stopped reading the replies to this blog after the first dozen or so, but after glancing through them a few minutes prior, I have to respond to one in particular: someone posted a comment with the name 'Mr. Michael Cornn' and wrote "I will be at the airport on August 15th. If you idiots are really all that tough, then come on!! Come get you a can of whoop ass!! And Not Dead Yet, I'll say it in plain English. Death To All Sand Nigger Kuwaitis Like You!! Don't need a faddish catchword for that:) Eyreh be afass seder emmak.. Kuwait"

Well, that wasn't me. I never respond to the comments with another comment. I always respond with a personal e-mail or another article. Put simply, if you see an article in this blog, it was written by myself. If you see a comment, it was written by someone else. So please, don't start a blanket party in the airport over one pissy article on the Internet. And don't start a party over an anonymous stranger imitating me.

Ma Salaama, Part 3. Looking Forward

So what's in the future for Mister Michael Cornn?

My contract in Kuwait ends on August 15, and I start my new job in Honduras on September 1. In the two weeks in between, I'll be cruising the US. First, I'll fly back to San Diego. Of all the places I've lived in the world, San Diego is the only one I miss. I wasn't born there, but it's the only place that ever felt like home. I'm going to surf in the Pacific, get drunk at my favorite bar, and catch up with all the friends I left there.

I only be in San Diego for a few days before I start the big road trip. I have a lot of stuff in storage in San Diego that I need to move to my parents in Indianapolis. So I'm gonna rent a car and tear across the country through the old remnants of Route 66. From West to East, Horatio Alger in reverse. I drive first to Phoenix, where I'll spend a few days with my buddy Chris. Chris was born in Kenya, raised in Saudi Arabia, and got his university degree in Cairo. He taught me my first words of Arabic and showed me how to fill a nargelah. He inspired me to travel to the Middle East, and I'm anxious to swap stories with him.

After Phoenix, I have to make a mad dash to Indianapolis. I won't have time to see the Grand Canyon or the Painted Desert or the Las Vegas Whorehouse Museum. Do they have a Las Vegas Whorehouse Museum? If not, they should make one. Anyway, I'll be in Indianapolis for a few days toward the end of the month, then I'll fly to Honduras to start my new job.

I can't wait to get to Honduras. I want to speak Spanish again, drink hard liquor again, meet Latin women again. I want to see the mountains and the rain forests and the Caribbean coast. I want to see toucans and tarantulas in the wild. I want to see spider monkeys flinging monkey poop and crush cockroaches that are bigger than my hand. Maybe I got a little carried away at the last bit, but I'm really looking forward to it all.

I'll stay in Honduras for at least a year, maybe longer, but I don't plan to settle down anytime soon. After I'm done with Hondo, I think I'll be ready for some time off. I think I'll finally take that long round-the-world trip I planned out so long ago.

Since I won't be in Kuwait anymore, it won't make much sense to keep up a blog called “Kuwait.” On August 15, I'll put this blog into archive. It will always be available at http://expat.typepad.com/kuwait I'm starting a new blog at http://expat.typepad.com/honduras. It will become the default blog on this site on the 15th. I hope you'll join me in Honduras. I'll see you there!

Ma Salaama, Part 2. Looking Back

A Kuwaiti tried to run me off the road tonight. I was driving home on the 30 when a black Caprice ran up behind me and flashed his brights. The lane next to me was full, so I couldn't get over. With no way to get out of his way, I sped up a bit and stayed in my lane.

He started flashing his brights on and off continuously and rode up so close that I couldn't see the lights themselves. I flipped down my rearview mirror and tapped my brake lights. He bumped the back of my car twice and then swerved into the breakdown lane. Halfway through passing me, while his rear door was in line with my front door, he swerved back into my lane. I slammed on my brakes, and so did he. We went from 140 to 100 in about a second.

I screamed and shook my fist out the window. I tailed him for about twenty minutes after that. As soon as he pulled over, I was going to show him what happened when you pulled that shit in America. I'm happy he never stopped or came up on a red light. Somewhere in the middle of this chase, I realized that I didn't want to get arrested for assault in my last two weeks in Kuwait. I pulled off the highway, made a U-turn to go the opposite direction, and went home.

And that starts my look back at a year in Kuwait. The kid in the Caprice wasn't an overly aggressive driver. No, he was a typical Kuwaiti. And that incident on the road is typical of the interactions I've had with Kuwaitis in the last twelve months. When people ask me if I enjoy living here, I tell them that I love living in the Middle East, but I hate living in Kuwait. And when people ask me if I'll miss this place, I say the same thing: I promise I'll come back to Arabia, but I'll never come back to Kuwait.

Kuwait is the most hypocritical, racist, godless, backward country I have ever seen. It's country that enforces Ramadan by law but ignores its poor and homeless. A country whose government gives millions of dollars in charity every year has a population that wouldn't give the time of day to a foreigner. It's a country whose women wear silk veils and skin tight capris, and whose men dress in dishdashas and listen to Eminem. When I first came here, I thought Kuwait was a nation of contrasts. Now I think it's a nation of hypocrites.

My American co-workers are amazed when I tell them that I have Arab friends. They haven't traveled around the Middle East, and the only Arabs they've seen are you Kuwaitis. Every Kuwaiti they've met is a rude and concieted xenophobe, and they think all Arabs are the same as you. It takes a long time for me to explain that Arabs in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon are kind and humble and helpful and that they hate Kuwaitis, too. When I first traveled to Jordan, I told people I was an American living in Kuwait. I thought I would get some nasty lectures about America, but I only got nasty lectures about Kuwait. Everybody I talked with told me about relatives of theirs in America and how much they loved it. Most people also had stories about relatives in Kuwait, or meeting Kuwaiti people, and how much they hated them. I couldn't mention Kuwait without hearing a long rant about what a bad reputation Kuwaitis have. Kuwait, you're a disgrace. Everybody outside your country despises you, even your fellow Muslims and Arabs. After living among you for twelve months, I think your reputation is well deserved.

And here come the comments: “But Michael, haven't you met any real Kuwaitis?” Yes, yes, I have. I've made every effort to meet Kuwaitis at the beaches, in the dive shops and outside the sheesha bars. I've chatted with probably a hundred Kuwaitis since coming here, but I haven't met a single one that had any interest in striking up a friendship with a foreigner. Yet I count Egyptians, Filipinos and Indians among my friends. It seems that foreigners are happy to meet other foreigners, while the locals here view everybody else as their servants.

My opinion of Kuwait isn't based on a few incidents of road rage. It's based on an earnest effort to examine and understand Kuwaiti culture. I've spoken with people all over Kuwait, from rich housewives to idle businessmen, from native-born Arabs to immigrant Sri Lankans. And I can confidently say that I have a clear understanding of Kuwait. I would even go so far as to say that I have a clearer understanding of Kuwait than most Kuwaitis. How many Kuwaitis have lived in the ghetto next to the poor immigrants who make up nearly seventy percent of this country? How many Kuwaitis reading this have limited their social interaction to just a third of the population?

I'll throw the question back at you: Have you, Kuwaiti, made any foreign friends? Maybe you've chatted with a few Americans or met the Canadian who teaches your kids. But have you made any effort to become friends with any of them? And what about the others? Do you know Indians or Bangladeshis? Have you ever said anything to a Filipino other than, “Excuse me, excuse me. Bring me my water. Hurry up, bring it now.”? You racist hypocrites. Most of the Indians and Bangladeshis coming to this country are Muslims, but you treat them like scum. In a religion where the whole ulemma is supposed to be equal, Kuwait emphasizes the distinction between first- and third-world more strongly than anywhere else. The Muslim community in Kuwait is equal only for as long as the prayers last. When they finish, you split into two groups: Kuwaitis and everybody else.

Maybe I'm so offended by this racism because I'm American. The US has a nasty history of racism toward immigrants, and we've worked so hard to remove that legacy that we're more likely to notice discrimination, whether at home or abroad. There are lot of things that I hate about Kuwait that I can forgive-the horrible traffic, the religious conservatism, the political repression. But I can't forgive your racism. Even by your own laws, it's forbidden. The first person the Prophet sent to pray at Mecca was an African, a former slave. 1400 years later, you import Bangladeshis, take their passports, put them to work, and refuse to pay them. Is that not slavery? Do you think the Prophet would approve of your country? Nobody else in the world approves, and I don't think he would approve either. Do you think Kuwait is a great country? Take a walk through Mangaf and see if the people living there feel the same way.

Unfortunately, any discussion of Kuwait among Kuwaitis ultimately deadlocks at one word: Guantanamo. Kuwaitis spend so much time (justifiably) criticizing America that they refuse to look at their own problems. I won't say that the US is perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than this country. Even Arab Muslims live better in America than they do in Kuwait. Three days after the anniversary of the Iraqi invasion, I can hardly believe that Americans died to save a country like this. I think we chose the wrong ally. I think we should have left you under Saddam. Maybe a touch of repression would have given you a hint of sympathy for the people you repress. At the very least, Saddam would have made you work for your money.

Goodbye, Kuwait. Keep your little desert wasteland. You're a shame to Arabs everywhere.

Ma Salaama, Part 1. Looking Sideways

I haven't written anything in a while because I've been busy arranging a new job (more on that later). And I've gotten a bad case of writer's block regarding the vacation to Lebanon. Though I had a few interesting experiences, the most exciting times all happened prior to my last entry. And I just can't describe the later events in a way that would be interesting to anybody else. I'll summarize:

Keith and I went to Bcharre after Baalbeck. Bcharre is in a valley in the Lebanon mountain range, and it's covered in green fields and steep roads and unmelted snow on the mountain tops. It's the kind of place where you expect to see Julie Andrews come running through a field singing, “The hills are alive, with the sound of muuusic!” After that, we went to Tripoli for a day. We decided that Tripoli and Beirut are the two faces of Lebanon. Tripoli is traditional, Islamic, and welcoming. Beirut is modern, secular, and a little bit mean. I don't think you can really understand Lebanon until you've visited both cities.

After a day in Tripoli, we took a bus back to Beirut and flew home. And that's the end. If you want to know more, you'll just have to go there.

I haven't made any recent updates because I've been straightening out my future plans. And my future plans have gone completely sideways. Sideways as in lateral. Lateral as in west. West as in ten thousand miles west, out of Arabia, past North Africa, over the Atlantic and the Caribbean and right into Central America.

You might remember that I planned on traveling around the Middle East when I finished my contract. Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. I had it all planned out. Then my buddy Bryce sent me an e-mail asking if I'd heard about a networking job in Honduras. He knew I spoke Spanish and thought I might be interested. So I sent off my resume just just to see what they would say. They responded right away and asked me to hire on.

And just like that, everything went sideways. My destination changed from Cairo to Comayagua, and my future went from unemployed backpacker back to government contractor. I leave Kuwait on August 15. I'm staying in the US for a few weeks, then I fly to Honduras at the end of the month. Since my travels in Kuwait are done, I'm going to start a new blog on this site. This blog will always be available at http://expat.typepad.com/kuwait. If you go to http://expat.typepad.com, my new blog will show up by default. I hope you'll stay with me on this new trip.

6/27/05. Baalbeck. Arab towns

After the ruins, we ate some lunch and walked around town. I'm finally starting to understand small towns in Arabia. They're little cities that grew organically with no preset design. They never had a master plan; new roads just snaked out from the city center wherever they were needed, and new buildings popped up alongside. The roads don't form neat grids. They ramble and twist and turn back on themselves, creating a maze where side streets and alleys became major routes through town. But the chaos gives the city vitality. The maze of streets and tangle of shops in an Arab town make every turn a discovery, every walk a tour. There's a unique energy in the way people move through the streets. It's like watching blood cells flow through arteries and capillaries and veins. The city is an organism, and the streets are alive.

I don't think there's any such thing as a quiet little Arab town. Arab towns are either noisy and chaotic or silent and asleep. From the first pre-dawn call to prayer to the end of the 'isha prayer at night, it's a buzzing hive. Veiled women shop for fruits and bread and cuts of meat. Men with trays of tea walk from shop to shop and come back with empty cups. Taxi drivers lean against beat-up Mercedes in the town center. Old men smoke sheesha and play backgammon. Young men cluster on street corners and look at girls. The air smells like burning wood and propane, and cigarettes and garlic, and roast lamb and incence and perfume. Two cars pass each other on a one lane road while a mother herds her children across the street. Her toddler stops in the middle of the road to get a lick from his ice cream cone. She grabs him by the wrist and pulls him to the curb, and he drops his cone and starts to cry. After they're gone, a skinny stray cat runs out and laps up the melted dessert.

The city buzzes all day long. It never slows down. Then, sometime after 'isha, it just stops. The streets empty. The whole town goes silent. You rarely notice people drifting home. You just look up from a magazine, or you walk out of a restaurant, and everybody's gone. You can get so caught up in the energy that you never see it go. It's as if someone threw a switch and turned off the whole town.

In Baalbeck, someone really had thrown a switch-the electricity is turned off at midnight. Everyone is home before the town goes dark. I was curled up in bed with a copy of The Prophet when the overhead light went off and the fan by the bed shut down. I pulled out a flashlight and kept reading until two. I never thought to switch off the lights. When the electricity came back on at six in the morning, I was rudely awoken by a light in my face and a blast of cold air from the fan.

Our host brought us breakfast and called a cab driver he knew. The driver told us he could take us to Bcharre for 50 dollars. We laughed and tried to talk him down to 20. He wouldn't go below 40, so we told him we would just take a service taxi instead.

We walked to the town square and talked to the people running the service taxis, but none of them went to Bcharre. One who spoke a little English told us that service taxis never went there, and the only to get there from Baalbeck was by a private car. So we had to go back to the hotel owner and ask him to call his friend again. We tried to get him to agree to the 40 dollar price he offered earlier, but he knew we were in a bind and insisted on collecting 50 dollars. We grudgingly agreed and made our way to Bcharre.

6/27/05. Baalbeck.

We flagged down a taxi outside our hotel and told the driver we were going to Baalbeck. He drove us to a line of service taxis and led us to the right one. The service taxis were old beat-up vans that seated 12 people plus the driver. They drove east from Beirut across the country through countless little towns. Whenever the driver saw someone standing by the road he would slow down, and his companion would lean out the window shouting, “Baalbeck! Baalbeck!” We picked up or dropped off a passenger about every ten minutes that way. Between Beirut and Baalbeck, I think we completely cycled through the van's occupants twice.

The van dropped us off in the center of Baalbeck, and we found a hotel pretty easily. The Pension Jamaal was run by middle-aged doctor who also owned a clinic across the street. He was nice guy, but he was a hell of a tout. He showed us the way to the ruins with a stop at his friend's souvenir shop. He drove us to a restaurant that was nice but also very expensive and owned by a good friend. He offered us to make us breakfast the next morning, but he didn't tell us it cost $5 apiece until after we were finished. We could have gotten the same food for under a dollar.

The temple of Baal in the Bekka Valley gave the town of Baalbeck its name. The temple (and its younger, smaller neighbor, probably dedicated to Bacchus) was famous around the ancient world. The site was built and rebuilt over 2,000 years and then disappeared into history. The first temples to Baal, the Phoenician god of fertility, were built sometime after 1,000 BC, long before the Greeks discovered it and named it Heliopolis. The Romans colonized it and built temples to Jupiter over the original temple to Baal. The Byzantines converted the site to a church. The Mamelukes changed it into a fortress. By that time, however, the cultural centers of the world had moved to other cities, the temple had been abandoned, and Baalbeck had become the small town that it is today.

The site of the ruins is massive. You might think, like I did, that a site with just two temples would be small. After all, Pompeii has three temples, and they take up less space than the city basilica. But the temples at Baalbeck would hold Pompeii's basilica and its temples and half the city as well. The temple to Bacchus is so massive that it's hard to believe that it's the smaller of the two. The temple of Jupiter was so huge that....well, it was too big to last. It was damaged and dismantled and nearly destroyed. Earthquakes took what looters couldn't steal, and the temple today is a broken plain of foundations and alcoves and broad staircases. Six huge columns still stand as testament to how massive the temple was. It's astounding to stand next to them and realize how huge they are. It's overwhelming to look around the court and realize that 49 other columns stood alongside these six, and a vast concrete dome covered the whole court.

I can't say much more about such an amazing place. Either go there yourself or go to my photo site at http://expat.fotopic/net and see for yourself.

6/26/05, Byblos. Too hot.

I'm sitting in a fashionable Italian restaurant in downtown Byblos waiting for the back of my shirt to dry out. Keith and I are the only customers. He's downstairs chatting up the female bartender and her cute friend. I'm upstairs in a little dining area that I have all to myself. There's a wall-mounted A/C unit up here, and I've maneuvered a table and chair so that I'm sitting in front of it. It's a stagnant and humid thirty degrees outside, but I'm sitting under a chilly twenty degree blast. And I'm loving it.

I'm feeling very Hunter Thompson-ish right now. Fifteen minutes ago, I stormed into this little restaurant short of breath and soaked in sweat. I fell into a barstool and demanded tequila-now. After patiently showing the bartender how to make a Tequila Sunrise, I ordered two. I finished the first one and cooled down a bit, but the sweat on my shirt wouldn't dry and my sunburn was aching and my mind wasn't working quite right. I spotted a stairwell in the back of the bar and asked if the restaurant was upstairs. The bartender said yes. I asked if they had air conditioning. She said yes. I asked if I could go upstairs and if she could turn the air conditioning on for me, and she said yes and yes again. I thought maybe yes was the only English word she knew. I grabbed my drink and backpack and hustled up the stairs.

So now I'm sitting in the upper floor of a tiny brick building in a little room that's called a diner but looks more like an attic, drinking tequila cocktails and scribbling into a notebook at 80 words a minute and trying desperately to make sense of everything I've seen in the past three days. Hunter would be proud.

I got out of bed at 8 this morning and woke up with a cold shower. We had hired a driver to take us up to Jeitta Grotto and Byblos and then back to Beirut. The driver was Joseph, a Lebanese guy from Mount Lebanon whose brother-in-law ran our hostel. Joseph took us to a good restaurant, and we bought him breakfast. Over coffee, we learned that he wanted to move to Montreal. He spoke decent French but bad English, and we helped him practice. He taught us a few words of Arabic in return. We really enjoyed swapping languages. I hope he gets a flight to Canada soon.

After breakfast, we drove north to Jeitta Grotto. The Grotto is a big cave system close to Nahr Al-Kalb, the river that divides Lebanon into northern and southern regions. The lower grotto collects snow melt from the higher mountains in Spring, and it's a source for the Nahr Al-Kalb for much of the year. That section was flooded and closed to tourists. The upper grotto is a steep canyon, part of which is open to visitors. Keith and I walked along a paved path in the upper grotto and stared at the water far below.

We left Jeitta at one and got to Byblos at two. The town felt as hot as Kuwait and as steamy as the Amazon. I wasn't used to this kind of humidity. I broke out in a heavy sweat, but it wouldn't evaporate. It just stuck to my skin and soaked through my shirt. We toured the old Crusader Castle on the Byblos coast, but Keith saw much more of it than I did. He ran all over the castle, but I sought out the highest walkways, the narrowest corridors and the darkest rooms, places where the sun was blocked and the wind was channeled. Keith walked the grounds around the castle, but I got dehydrated and retreated to the shade of the keep.

After the castle I insisted on finding water, food and shade. Keith was hungry, and he agreed. We went to Pepe's Old Fishing Club on the Byblos harbor. Pepe is an old Mexican who opened the Fishing Club back in the 1940's. His restaurant was a world-famous hot spot until the civil war drove the tourists away. He spent the 80's in Mexico and came back to Lebanon in 1992. The club reopened immediately, and today it's the best place to eat in Byblos. The walls at Pepe's were covered with pictures of the old man posing with celebrities like Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, and Jacques Cousteau. A picture of Pepe and Rafik Hariri had been moved from the inside dining room to the outside deck.

Pepe's didn't have air conditioning or the Mexican food I was hoping for, but it was cool and shaded and relaxing. We got a table outside on the deck, where we could watch the people and listen to the ocean while we ate. We ordered enough food to feed a family, and over two hours we ate it all. We nearly filled up on hommos and olives and baba ghanoush and shanklish and bread before the waiter brought two big plates of shish tawook and a huge platter of french fries. When we'd finished that, we could hardly move, but the waiter brought us half a watermelon for dessert. We decided that there's always room for watermelon, so we ate the the whole thing and left a pile of seeds in an empty green husk. Then we propped our feet up on the railings and patted our bellies like a pair of old men.

We sat on the deck and drank local wine and watched the people on the harbor. Keith said the only thing he needed was a hammock. I said the only thing I needed was a joint. I hardly ever get high, but on special occasions-like when I'm watching the Mediterranean in a small town in Lebanon from the deck of a seafood restaurant run by a guy named Pepe-a Bob Marley record and a big fat joint really hit the spot.

I didn't meet Pepe, but I got a glimpse of him just as we left. When you say the words, “old Mexican fisherman,” Pepe is what you see. He was shirtless and barefoot, dressed in a pair of white swim trunks and a 3-foot-wide sombrero. He had a rapid, stiff-legged walk and a slightly hunched posture, but he moved with a calm and unhurried energy. He had a long fishing pole in one hand with a little tackle box tucked under his arm. In the other hand, he held a bundle of little fish that he had caught on the harbor wall. He looked like he had everything he wanted in the world.

We left Pepe's before we wore out our welcome. As soon as we left the shade, I started to sweat. The wind had stopped, and the temperature had risen. We walked around the souq for a while, but the calm mood of Pepe's vanished, and soon I was dehydrated and worn out all over again. The back of my shirt turned darker than the front. My sunburned forehead went bright red. I dragged Keith into the Byblos Wax Museum just for the shade and air conditioning. That kept our attention for about fifteen minutes, then we left and I ran to the next air-conditioned spot.

That was Storia, the little Italian restaurant where I am now-sitting under a freezing air conditioner, downing the last of my Tequila Sunrise, and hoping I've arranged the things I've seen into a coherent story. Hunter would be proud.

Keith came upstairs while I was writing. He asked me how the writing was going, and if the bartender mixed a good cocktail, but the subtext was that he was bored and ready to move on. I'm not ready. I have too much writing to do, and it can't wait until I get home or even until I get to the hotel. I told him I planned to sit under this air conditioner until I got three days worth of stories or the sun went down, whichever came last. Then I told him to go tour the town and meet me here at sunset. He said he didn't mind waiting and went downstairs for another beer.

So I'm going to end this story here. I've been up in this attic for an hour writing about the last three days. I'd stay here all night if I was traveling alone. But I'm not going to sit up here like Emily Dickinson while my friend is downstairs waiting for me to get out and have a good time. Keith likes to stay busy, and he keeps his companions busy as well. It's not fair of me to keep him waiting while I try to get my phrasing just right. So I'm going to close this journal and finish writing it when I get home. I might forget some of the things I've done, but I'll remember that I had fun doing them. Does that makes any sense at all?

6/25/05, Beirut. Monot Street

Keith and I took a taxi from the hotel, but our driver had never heard of Pacifico Restaurant. We told him to just head up to Monot Street, and we cruised up and down the street leaning out the cab window asking if anyone knew Pacifico. After awhile, we found it down a little alleyway off the main strip.

Monot Street is where the young and beautiful hang out on the weekends. In character, it's a little like Market Street in San Francisco and Hollywood's Sunset Strip. The street itself is a narrow road that branches off into innumerable side streets and alleys packed with clusters of bars and techno clubs. Pacifico was sandwiched between a Latin dance club and a stylish two-story bar. The inside was split in two: a chill lounge by the entrance and a dining area in the back. A Lebanese DJ blasted Salsa music, and white-suited waiters ran between the tables and the bar. We heard bits of Arabic and French and English from the crowd. It was hectic and relaxing at the same time.

We didn't see Ingrid or Anwar in the lounge. There was only one table left in the restaurant, so I grabbed it while Keith waited for our friends outside. At half past ten, they hadn't shown up. We guessed they had canceled, so Keith came back to the table, and we ordered the first two rounds of drinks.

Before I go on, let me explain something about tequila. Most tequila sold today isn't really tequila. It's ten to twenty percent tequila mixed with eighty to ninety percent neutral spirits. Neutral spirits are almost pure alcohol, and that's what gives tequila its infamous bite. Top-shelf tequila is labeled '100% Agave,' indicating that it's 100% tequila, not tequila-flavored moonshine. This real, true tequila is as smooth as twelve-year-old scotch, and it tastes so different from regular tequila that some people think it's a completely different drink.

This 100% Agave stuff is impossible to find in the Middle East. I hadn't had real tequila since I left California. That was until I went to Pacifico. I read every drink on the drink list, all 73 of them. And when I came to the end, I saw it. The one true sign of pure 100% agave tequila: anejo.

I excitedly waved the bartender over. I shouted over the music, "Bring us a pitcher of margaritas on the rocks and a glass of anejo." I had to explain what 'on the rocks' meant and that what I pronounced "ahn-YAY-ho" was what he called "ah-NEE-joe." When the glass arrived, I took a hesitant sip. Then I took a big gulp. Then I slammed the glass on the table and threw my hands in the air and shouted:

"Gracias a dios! Se tiene tequiiila!"

I thought about giving a big Mexican "Arriba!" but people were staring at me, and the waiter was walking toward us, and Keith was taking my liquor away. I snatched back the anejo and the margarita and assured everybody I was still sober and mostly harmless.

I spotted Ingrid in the lounge. I waved at her, and she came over to our table. She apologized for being late and told us she had a late business meeting. We stared quizically at the laptop case she had bought in lieu of a purse. She fished around in the case for a cigarrette and lighter and said, "I took a taxi straight from the office."

Half an hour later, I had finished the anejo and most of the margarita pitcher by myself, so my memory is hazy from here on out. We found out that Ingrid's father was a UN diplomat who had moved his family all over the Middle East. We talked about Turkey and exchanged advice for visiting Petra and the Pyramids. She told us some funny stories about touring Cairo as a solo European woman. I told her my story about meeting fans of Al Qaeda in a gas station in Jordan. We finished our dinner and a second pitcher of margaritas and stumbled out into the street.

Monot Street had come to life. We had to squeeze through a packed crowd in the chill lounge just to get out of Pacifico. Outside, we had to keep moving to keep from getting run over by coeds dressed in Donna Karan and Armani Exchange. The Salsa club had switched to techno music that blasted into the street. Ingrid said that Monot Street was a boring place, and "people only come here because they don't know anywhere else to go." I agreed with her. Every big city has a street like Monot. It's the place that's listed in the tourist brochures and fashionable magazines. It's the default place for people who want to look cool. The real hot spots-where you can dance to good music and drink good liquor and meet real people-are constantly shifting, always a step ahead of the rest of town. We needed someone local to show us those places, and this Dutch or Turkish or whatever-she-was girl had offered to be our guide. Who was I to argue? We ducked into a bar across the street to make our plans.

The bar was a loud, neon-drenched club filled with twenty-year-olds sipping cocktails and trying to score. The tequila was raging, and I felt like I needed to cool off, so I ordered a bottle of water. Keith looked at me like I was insane. "What the fuck? You can't not drink in here!"

"I can't get too drunk."

"You're on vacation. You can get as drunk as you want."

"It's the buzz, man! You gotta maintain the buzz. There's an art to keeping up a good happy bu-" but Keith had gone back to flirting with Ingrid.

I was getting anxious to ditch Monot Street and visit a good club. Ingrid said something about a place called the Basement. I asked Keith if he was ready to go. A pack of young Lebanese girls walked past us and stared at Keith. Keith stared back and said, "Nah, let's stick around here for a while."

"Come on, man. This place is boring. Let's go find someplace fun. You know, good DJ's, dance floors, cool people."

"Those girls look pretty cool."

"Who? Huh, them? They look like bimbos."

"Yeah, exactly."

"Fuck it. Stay here. I'm going to the Basement."

"What's that?"

"Hell if I know. Let's go."

Keith finally agreed and Ingrid offered to lead us to the basement. We had bought her dinner and drinks at Pacifico, so we asked her to pay for our round of drinks here. We stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air while she picked up the tab. We stood in the middle of Monot Street and talked about our plans for the night. I wanted to dance and drink some good liquor. Keith wanted to get laid. I asked him how he was going to flirt with these girls if he didn't speak Arabic or French. He just smirked and said he could do it. I wished him the best of luck and ran into a club for a quick drink.

Ingrid didn't come out for a long time. I went back into the neon techno club to look for her, but she was gone. She had melted into the crowd, probably looking for someone new to buy her a drink. I was depressed. Now we were stuck on Monot Street with all the copycat clubs. I never did make it to the Basement. I wonder now if it was as good as our guide said it was.

I was standing at the bar waiting for Ingrid when I heard two girls talking in French. One was tall and athletic, with wavy brown hair and blond streaks. The other was shorter but prettier and about to flop out of her strapless dress. The tall one was speaking French like a native Parisian. The short one spoke that weird creole of French and Arabic that you only hear in Beirut.

There's something incredibly alluring about Lebanese women speaking French. It's the most beautfiul women in the world speaking the most beautiful language in the world. It's complex and exotic and sexy and sublime. I didn't realize I was staring at them until the tall one waved at me and smiled. The tequila told me I could speak French, and I waved back and said, "Bon zhooour, madam." She said something in French, and I said that I didn't speak Arabic. I don't know what happened after that, but I left the club a few minutes later. C'est la vie, as the Lebanese say.

Keith asked where Ingrid was, and I said, "We lost our guide. Let's drink!" We wandered across the street and went into a little bar that-thank God-wasn't playing techno. Keith rushed up to the bar and asked what I wanted to drink.

"I'm still pretty far gone. I'll get another water."

"No, no, no. You're getting a drink. Bartender, two Al-Mazas. Two. You know two? Duex beeros!"

"No beer. If I mix liquor and beer, I'll puke."

"You're drinking beer, Mike. I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. We're gonna drink a beer right here, right now."

"I'll make you a deal. I'll keep drinking if you do a shot with me."

"The anejo?"

"They don't have anejo here. We gotta do Cuervo."

"I can't do Cuervo, man. I'm not doing Cuervo."

"Don't worry. After a few shots it tastes just like anejo. The trick is to keep drinking until it tastes good."

"Alright, alright. I hate you, man. Bartender! No beer. Tequila, two. And limes, lots of limes."

The bartender brought out two shots of tequila and four slices of lime. Keith reached for the limes before he reached for the liquor, but I grabbed the limes and tossed them back over the bar. One of them bounced off the bartender's shoulder. Keith protested, but I shouted, "Real men don't need chasers!"

"Now I really hate you," he said. "And I'm gonna hate the whole world in the morning."

"Wait, wait, wait. I got a toast."

"Oh, come on. Let's just get this over with."

"No, you're gonna like this one. Ok, ready, here it is. To the three greatest things in life: a cocktail before and a cigarette after."

Keith laughed while he downed his shot. I think part of it went up his nose, because he coughed and slammed his fist on the bar. I dropped my glass and stumbled back and shouted my best Mexican "Arriba!" Keith had his eyes closed and was breathing hard. I slapped him on the back and called for two more shots.

"That's some good stuff, huh?"

"You fucker."

6/25/05, Beirut. Scuba

When we went to the Rivera Yacht Club yesterday, we found that they had a dive club, and the owner would take us out for $40 a dive. We hadn't planned on doing any scuba diving on this trip, but we decided to go out anyway. So we took a cab to the Riviera this morning and spent the whole day underwater.

The dive shop rented all of our equipment to us. I rented a 'shorty' wetsuit and grabbed a weight belt and weights. I told the divemaster that I wore 6 kilograms of weights when I wore a fullsuit, so she told me to wear 5 for the shorty. What she didn't tell me was that we were diving on steel tanks.

For those who don't dive, let me explain. Most of the world uses aluminum tanks. Aluminum tanks are lighter and less dense than steel. They sink slowly when they're full, and they float when they're empty. I was trained using aluminum tanks.

Steel tanks are heavier and denser. They can take more wear and tear, but they're more expensive. They sink fast when they're full, and they never float. When you go from aluminum tanks to steel tanks, you have to remove three to five kilograms of weight from your weight belt. But I didn't know that we were using steel tanks.

So I loaded up my five kilo's of weight and my big steel tank and walked to the edge of the dock and jumped in. I went under the water, bobbed up for about two seconds, and then sank like a rock. Just before I went down, I heard Keith say, “Where you goin', man?” I looked up from ten feet and saw the divemaster at the surface thumbing upward, telling me to get back up there. I inflated my BCD all the way, but that just made me float underwater. I kicked up as hard as I could, and only with constant kicking could I keep my head above the surface. I told the divemaster I was overweight, and she helped me get most of the weights off. I asked her why I could maintain buoyancy in the Persian Gulf with 6 kilo's, but I sank like a shipwreck in the Mediterranean with only 5. She checked all my gear and said she was a little confused about it, too. After the dive, I asked her, “These are aluminum tanks, right?” “No,” she said, “In Lebanon, we use steel tanks.” We both smiled.

“You must be a good swimmer,” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you were overwieghted by ten pounds, and you managed to stay off the bottom.”

Most of Lebanon's dive sites are deeper than 20 meters. Keith and I aren't certified to go that deep yet, so we had to dive the shallow sites close to shore. We walked down a dock near some tide pools and jumped in the water from there. A cute German instructor led us around in front of the club. We passed some huge rock formations and slipped through several short tunnels that were barely wide enough for us. In the tunnels, I felt my way along the bottom with my fingers, and I banged my tank against the top whenever I inhaled. The first tunnel came out under a rock overhang so big that at first I thought it was a cave. I flipped on my back and watched my bubbles gather on the bottom of the rock. We didn't see much life. We heard lots of boat traffic above us, and we guessed that must have scared the fish into hiding.

The second dive was better. An Egyptian freighter named the Macedonia sank close to Pigeon Rocks during World War II and settled in fifteen meters of water. This was my first wreck dive. We took a little boat out around the Corniche a few hundred meters out to sea. The wind had picked up and three foot swells ran past the boat. The swells shook the boat, but things calmed down once we got underwater. The freighter was broken into several pieces, and the divemaster led us around the bottom while we swam through broken steel plates and loose cables. When we reached the middle part of the ship, where it came to rest on its side, we swam just a few feet over the hull. We couldn't see the bottom or any life, just riveted steel plate spread out as far as we could see. It was surreal.

On the boat, we met Ingrid, a cute European girl who was a part-time instructor at the club. When we got back to shore, we invited her for a drink and walked toward the bar. She waved us back and said, “No, no, no. Don't sit over there. Nobody important ever sits over there. The divemasters all sit up here. Come on over. We'll get some drinks.” So we left the bar and took over the executive seating.

Ingrid's background was hard to pin down. I asked her where she was from. She pulled a cigarette out of her purse and lit it, and as I was about to ask again, she said, “My father is from Holland, but I was born in Turkey. Is that good enough for you?” I'd never been chided for asking someone's nationality before. I mumbled a quick yes and looked around for a waiter and a beer. We all sat in awkward silence until Ingrid's buddy Anwar showed up with a backgammon set and challenged her to a game. I asked if they would teach me how to play, and they explained the rules while they set up the board.

I learned that the first rule of backgammon is that you have to play at lightning speed. It's the opposite of chess. You never pause. You never examine the board. You roll your dice and move your chips and get out of the way while your opponent rolls his dice and moves his chips and gets out of your way. If you're too slow, sometimes your opponent gets impatient and rolls his dice again and gets a free turn. There's more to backgammon than that, but the prime rule is just to play as fast as you can and hope nobody notices when you break the rules.

Ingrid beat Anwar ten games to two, and I took on the champion. I was quite proud when I won two games to one before she got bored with the whole thing. I found out that Anwar had lived in Los Angeles for five years, and we all started talking about southern California. I told stories about surfing San Diego on chilly November mornings. Anwar told me about the Lebanese expat community in central LA. Keith had grown up in New York and dismissed all of southern California as “too dangerous.” That set off the East Coast/West Coast debate that you get anytime you put Americans from different coasts in the same room. Anwar and I talked about Hollywood and Orange County. Keith talked about the Oakland earthquakes and the LA riots. We argued back and forth about Compton and Queens and Kosher delis and California burritos. In the end, I won the argument when I said I wore flip-flops and tank tops in January. Score one for SoCal.

Ingrid asked us what plans we had for the evening. We said we didn't know where to go. Somewhere the conversation had turned to Mexican food, and Anwar told me there was a great Mexican restaurant on Monot Street. It was named Pacifico, and he said it served the best Mexican food in Lebanon. And it was right in the middle of a bunch of really fun clubs. Ingrid wrinkled her nose when Anwar mentioned Monot Street, but we all agreed to meet at Pacifico later that night.

6/24/05, Beirut. Homesick

I'm still a little drunk from drinking tequila and too much wine. I'm a little sunburned, too. So cut me some slack if I sound incoherent.

We started the day at the National Museum of Beirut. It wasn't very big, but it had a great collection of Lebanese artifacts. The museum emphasized what a cultural crossroads Lebanon has been. Lebanese cedar went into the barges that carried pharaohs down the Nile. Athens established colonies here and traded with the native Phoenicians. Roman sculptures and the Byzantine mosaics show how much the Romans valued and influenced the area. Umayyid, Abassid, and Mameluke glass and metal ware were on display. And artifacts from the Ottoman era showed 300 years of Turkish control. The best display I saw was a collection of bronze and clay plates with ancient Phoenician script. The plates are over 4,000 years old; they're the oldest written material in the world. The Phoenicians invented the first true phonetic alphabet, so if you can read this, thank the Lebanese.

The museum doesn't allow photography, with or without flash, so I don't have any pictures of the exhibits. If you want to see it, you'll just have to go to Beirut. If you do visit the museum, remember that the recent history is on the walls outside. The museum stood on the Green Line, the shifting no man's land that divided Beirut in half. The buildings around it are riddled with bullet holes, some as small as a fingernail, others as big as a fist. This isn't a lightly damaged area where you can find a few telltale divots in the sidewalk. There are stretches of road a hundred yards long where the walls-from the ground to well over our heads-are covered in jagged round holes. This place was a war zone, and it still has scars.

We left the museum and took a taxi to the American University of Beirut, but the campus was too crowded to visit. So we told the taxi to take us up to the Corniche. The driver dropped us off next to the Riviera Yacht Club, a big 5-star resort right on the ocean. We slipped inside for a bottle of wine.

The Riviera Yacht Club has its own beach, pool, marina, restaurant, and two bars. It's not original or unique. You could find a resort like it in Havana or Cancun. But it was cool and relaxing and filled with gorgeous women. Of course, the whole country is filled with gorgeous women, but they seemed to concentrate here. Or maybe they weren't more concentrated but just wore less clothing. I don't know. It was good.

So we got a table in the shade and ordered a bottle of wine and pretended to watch the ocean while we stared at the girls. The waiters all spoke good English and brought our drinks and snacks. The snack was carrots dipped in lemon juice. They didn't go too well with the white wine, but they're the standard snack here in Lebanon. American bars serve peanuts. Lebanese bars serve carrots.

After the Riviera, we drifted down the Corniche to the Pigeon Rocks. I don't know why they're called Pigeon Rocks. They don't look like pigeons. They just look like really big rocks. Maybe Rock Rocks was redundant. They're two very tall, very narrow islands just a few meters from the coast. They're surrounded by a little shallow bay and some rocky tide pools. Toddlers who were too young to swim in the ocean splashed in the bigger tide pools while the teenagers dove off cliffs over deep spots in the bay. Some middle-aged men stood on the edge of the water and tried to catch some fish. They had big eight-foot long poles and lures the size of my thumb, but I didn't see them catch anything bigger than a sardine. I think the fishing was just an excuse to stand on the shore and enjoy the view.

The sun was hot, but every few minutes a breeze kicked up off the ocean and gave us a little kiss. The ocean that day was rough but not angry. Little whitecaps dotted the surface, and every now and then a good sized wave splashed the swimmers and the fishermen. The water went right up to the tide pools. The tide pools ran right up to the cliffs, and the cliffs ran a hundred feet straight up to the Corniche. We saw joggers and bikers and rollerbladers running up and down the road. Clusters of college students hung out by the music stores and made me wish I was nineteen again. We sat in a restaurant with a patio that hung over the cliffs and made conversation over beers and carrots. The place looked so much like San Diego that, for the first time since coming to the Middle East, I started to get homesick. It's ironic. When I go to a place like Kuwait, which is completely different from home, I don't have the least desire to turn around and leave. But when I go somewhere like Beirut, which looks so much like San Diego, I want to get on the first flight to California. The Corniche looks just like La Jolla, only with less money, prettier women, and more lemon-flavored carrots. God, I miss my home.

We lingered by Pigeon Rocks until sunset, then we decided we needed a drink. We had been drinking all day, but we still needed a drink. You know what it's like when you're on vacation. Keith had discovered Al Maza beer, a local Lebanese brew, and he stuck to that the entire trip. I had switched to tequila, my drink of choice when I lived in San Diego.

Close to the AUB campus, we saw a rooftop bar on top of the Palm Beach Hotel. We went in the hotel and up nine floors and found the Sky Bar-the ritziest bar and restaurant in the country. The hostess told us that all the tables were reserved, but we could drink at the bar if we wanted. We drifted to the bar and placed our orders. Keith had his usual Al Maza. I ordered a glass of Cuervo. I waited for the drinks to arrive, and Keith looked for a seat. I joined him at an empty table, but as soon as I sat down the manager ran up and told me that the table was reserved. I looked at Keith, who was already seated across from me. I asked the manager why he didn't tell the six foot tall rugby player that the table was reserved. He scampered off behind the bar. Sometimes its good to have a travel companion who can bench press 500 pounds.

The bartender brought me the bill. I looked at it, reached for my wallet, looked at it again, stood up, sat back down, pulled out my wallet, looked at the bill again, and slammed it down on the table. I looked at Keith and said, “We're leaving.”

“What are your worried about? That guy's not gonna fuck with us.” He thought I was still worried about the manager. “And the view here is great.”

“You mean the view of the ocean or the view of that blond chick's legs?”

He laughed. “Both.”

I pushed the bill toward him. “View this.”

“How much is it?”

“Sixty thousand pounds. For a beer-a local beer!-and a shot of Cuervo. Your beer was fifteen dollars. My tequila cost twenty-five! We're leaving.”

He coughed and grimaced and laughed all at the same time. “Ok, so we don't order another drink. We'll just nurse these drinks and hang out until-oh, damn, Mike, turn around. You gotta see this girl.”

I was in no mood for flirting. I chugged my drink and said, “We're leaving.”

Keith was unmoved. He never got to drink real bottled beer in Kuwait, and nothing-nothing-was going to make him hurry his drink. I stood by the window and made the best of it by watching the Corniche nine stories below. The sun had just set, and the Corniche was getting busy. When Keith finally finished his beer, I rushed to the elevator to get down to the street and into the crowd.

The tequila started to kick in on the elevator. I leaned back in the corner finding ways to insert curses into the amount of the bill. “Sixty-fucking-thousand pounds! Can you believe it? Sixty thousand god damned pounds.” Keith and I swore we'd stick to the tiny dive bars. It's easier to meet people in the little bars. Nobody has the attitude you find in the tres chic salons like the Sky Bar Corniche.

We were arguing over where to go next when we hit the ground floor. We got off the elevator and passed two dressed-to-kill Lebanese models waiting to get in. They were chatting when the doors opened, but they stopped talking when they saw two Americans and flashed us a little smile. I stepped in the hallway and looked over my shoulder and saw one of them hit the button for floor number nine. They were both staring at me when the doors closed. Keith was halfway down the hall and I yelled at him, “Hey, Keith, let's go back to the Sky Bar!”

6/23/05, Beirut, Arrival

Kuwait is flat. The highest point in the country is only 40 meters above sea level. The hot and dry desert generates fast winds that race unimpeded to the Persian Gulf. On some days the winds gust up over 30 miles per hour. They make for some thrilling sailing but terrifying flying. It was especially bad today. The wind was howling as we boarded, and the whole plane shuddered while we taxied down the runway. As we sped up for takeoff, the cabin started to shake. When the nose lifted up, it drifted to one side. As soon as we left the ground, the whole plane lurched to the right. We banked left and right and shot up at a steep angle trying to get over the wind. I was used to heavy turbulence in the middle of a flight, but I had never experienced such a violent takeoff. While the plane shook so hard that even the flight attendants stayed seated, I slammed down the window shade, put in my headphones and turned the music up to full blast. Somewhere over Saudi Arabia the turbulence calmed down, and so did I. When we landed, I was never happier to see a flight end. I'm not looking forward to the return trip.

We got through customs without any trouble. When we got to our hotel (the wonderful Pension Al-Nazih), they told us our room wouldn't be ready for another 2 hours. I sat down to chill in the lobby. Keith ran out to find a pub. I decided to join him, and I took pride in being the first one to spot a bar. We had our first beers in a chill little dive bar on the east end of Beirut.

6/23/05 Kuwait City. Beirut?

The only direct flight from Kuwait City to Beirut left at noon. That was bad timing for me. I work overnight, from 5 pm to 5 am. An early morning flight allows me to go straight from work to the airport. An afternoon flight lets me take a nap before I leave. But a noon flight forces me to stay up longer than I should-from noon the previous day until noon the next day, sometimes longer. By the time I get to the airport, I'm usually sleepy-drunk. That's a term I made up. Sleepy-drunk is when you've been up so long that you slur your speech, lose your train of thought, and start to act intoxicated. I've been there so many times that, well, I made up a term for it.

We got to the airport at ten in the morning. I had downed two Red Bulls on the way and felt wired. When we got to the flight gate, the guard who checked our passports and tickets looked confused. He checked the American passports, and he checked the tickets to Beirut. Then he double-checked them. He asked us, "Beirut?" like he couldn't believe that two Americans would ever go there. We confirmed that Beirut really was our destination and got on the plane.

We both got a good laugh out of that confused look. We felt a bit of pride, too. I know it's selfish and naive, but I like being the only Americans willing to visit a certain place. I get a little upset when I hear people say, "I wouldn't go there. It's too dangerous." But I get a little pride, too. Some people prove their courage by joining the army. Some people prove it by jumping out a plane. I prove it by going everywhere they tell me not to go.

An American friend in the States warned me not to go to Beirut because it's too dangerous. He said it was still a war zone. I sent him an e-mail later: "Everything's going well in the war zone. The shells haven't hit us yet, but the beer is great. We're sitting on the beachhead sipping Coronas and flirting with Lebanese women. It's too bad you couldnt' come, but I think it's just too dangerous for you."

Scenic views, visiting the mosque, and more

A few random updates. Read them all, Kuwaitis, because I need your help.

-I need some scenic views of Kuwait. I don't have any good photos of Kuwait except for some pictures of fish in The Scientific Center. Kuwaitis, what are some really beautiful sights that you think I should photograph?

I must have a photo of a Kuwaiti sunrise. The sunrises in Kuwait are the most beautiful I've ever seen. I think it's all the sand in the air that makes gives the sunrises such vivid colors. So where is the best place to view a sunrise in Kuwait?

-I want to visit the Grand Mosque in Kuwait. It's the only mosque in Kuwait that non-Muslims are allowed to enter. What are the mosque's visiting hours? How much is admission? Is it very nice inside? And where exactly is it?

-I'm off to Lebanon next week. I'm going to party in Beirut for a few days, then see the ruins at Baalbek, then drive up to Bcharre to see the home of my favorite poet, Khalil Gibran. After that, it's a trip to Tripoli, and a drive down the coast to Byblos. As usual, I'll make a full report here.

-I set up an archive journal at http://expat.typepad.com/archive. The archive is a condensation and refinement of the travel reports I posted here. The reports are grouped into one single article instead of separate posts, and they're cleaned up a bit to make them more readable. I hope that people who want to visit the places I've seen find the archive useful. And I hope that people who never visit those places at least get a taste of them through the things I've written.

Shlonik

My language lessons continue. I don't take formal lessons in a classroom. I take informal lessons at the barber shop.

Hair salons in the Middle East are called hair saloons. I don't know where the extra 'O' came from. They're more than just barber shops; they're little social clubs. Everybody sips tea and talks while they wait for a haircut, and they hang out for a while after they're done. Some of the customers don't even get their hair cut; they just stop in for a chat.

None of the barbers at my saloon speak English. The older guy-I guess he's the owner-speaks Arabic. The other barber is a Turk who speaks Arabic and Turkish. They used to have an Egyptian who spoke a little English, but he went home last year. So I always practice my Arabic when I'm in the saloon. The barbers and their customers are really nice people, and they all want to teach me the language. I forget most of it, but I always walk out with at least a few new words.

I went in for a cut last week. The older Arab barber was the only guy in the shop. He was finishing up a plate of shwarma and watching TV. I said, “Salaam Alakam!” and shook his hand. He smiled and said, “Wa Alakam Salaam. Shlonik?” He gestured toward the chair. I thought, shlonik? What does shlonik mean? I had heard it before, but I couldn't remember where.

He didn't have any tea, so he bought me a Pepsi. “Shlonik?” he asked again. I just smiled and thanked him for the drink. Shlonik, shlonik, what the hell is shlonik? Then I remembered where I'd heard it-it was here, in the saloon, about a month ago. The Turkish guy had started to cut my hair and said, “Shlonik? Same-same?” And I had said yes, and he had given me my usual cut. That's what shlonik meant: same.

I ran my hand through my hair and said, “Na'am, shlonik.” The barber looked a little confused, but he didn't reply. He finished his lunch and stood up and asked again, “Shlonik?” I said again, “Na'am, tamaam. Shlonik, menfadlik.” He got a pair of scissors and a comb. He laughed to himself and said, “Shlonik.” I switched to English, “Yes, please. Shlonik. Same-same.”

Halfway through the cut an English-speaking Kuwaiti came in. We all said hello, and the barber said something in Arabic. He laughed at me and said, “Shlonik.” The Kuwaiti laughed as well and asked me, “Do you know shlonik?”

I said, “Yeah, it means 'same-same', right?”

He got a kick out of that. He translated for the barber, and the barber laughed so hard he had to stop cutting. The Kuwaiti said, “No, shlonik means 'How are you'.”

I said, “I thought 'How are you' is 'Keefalak'.”

He replied, “Yes, yes. Keefalak, shlonik, same-same.”

“Now you're really confusing me.”

“Keefalak is Arabic for 'how are you,' but in the Gulf we say 'shlonik.' It's a Gulf dialect, like when people in Texas say 'howdy.'”

We all cracked up. I replayed the (translated) conversation in my head.

“Hello, sir.”

“Hi, how are you?”

“Hello.”

“How are you?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You want a Pepsi?”

“Yes. Thank you. Pepsi good.”

“How are you?”

“Yes, yes, ok.”

“Ready for a haircut?”

“Yeah, ok.”

“How are you?”

“Yeah, yeah, ok. How are you, please.”

Another customer walked in. Before anybody could say anything, I jumped out of the barber's seat and yelled, “Shlonik!” The customer said in English, “Um...fine. How are you?” The Kuwaiti laughed. The barber patted me on the back. This is how I learn Arabic at the saloon.

Diving Kuwait

I finished my PADI Open Water Certification just before I left for Italy. Since then I've done four dive at two sites in Kuwait. The pictures you see here were taken at Khobar Island, east of Fahaheel. These aren't my pictures. Cord Harris, my dive buddy (and boss), took
them.










That's me at Khobar. Khobar is a soft coral reef that circles around a tiny island offshore. It's about a 40 minute boat ride from the shore. The water runs from 3 to 13 meters deep, and most of the coral is about 8 meters down. On this day, visibility was about 5 meters. When I did my training dives here last month, it was over ten.

The other site I've done in Inner Reef, also called Cuttlefish Reef. It's shallower than Khobar, barely 5 meters deep. It doesn't have as much coral or wildlife as Khobar. About the only advantage it has over Khobar is that it's just a ten minute boat ride from shore.










This is Cord, the photographer. Cord's a gadget geek. He has his own wetsuit, mask, fins, snorkel, BCD, weights, camera, knife, lights, slate, whistle and safety sausage. He's about to buy his own dive boat. I think his next purchase will be a submarine.










This is Marcus, my dive buddy for this trip. Marcus is a lot of fun, but I had never dived with him before. I learned two important things about diving with Marcus:

1) Marcus has eagle eyes. In ten meters of visibility, he can spot a fish twenty meters away. He found every lionfish, barracuda and angelfish in the water. If it wasn't right in my face or lit up like a Vegas casino, I swam right past it. Then Marcus signaled me back and pointed it out to me.
2) Marcus has never heard of the metric system. My maximum depth: 10 meters. Marcus' response: “That's about 50 feet, right?” The temperature recorded by my computer: 30 degrees Celsius. Marcus' response: “Your computer's broken. It's over 80 out here.” The air left in my tank: 70 bar. Marcus' response: “What the hell does that mean?”






I'll report on more sites as I gain more experience as a diver. If you want to dive in Kuwait, there are two great dive shops that can get you started. BBR Dive Center, located in the Palms Resort, is the place where I got my first Scuba training. Dive Caroline is a dive club in Fahaheel, located in the old Fahaheel Sea Club, where route 212 meets Gulf Road. See you there!

Feedback

Thanks to everybody who has visited this site, and thanks especially for all the feedback. Getting a lot of visitors every day is nice, but getting comments on my blog is even better. So keep clicking on the comments button.

Also, I made a new sidebar called Favorite Posts. It's a link to old posts that a lot of people enjoyed. If you have a particular article here that you really liked, let me know. I'll add it to Favorite Posts.

Goals

After a lot of thought, I've decided what I want to do with my life. Here are my goals-the things I want to do before I die.

Grow up. Stay young. Do something daring and unconventional every day until the act of being daring and unconventional becomes predictable and mundane. Become a champion of men, a charmer of women, and a companion of children. Live like a lion, love like a swan, and laugh like a fool.

Bungee jump.

Seize the day, suck the marrow from life, build a better mouse trap, and use fewer cliches. Always be happy, never be satisfied.

Fight the demons, fly with the angels, live like a sinner, and die like a saint. Give my life to save another, give my brain to science, give my heart to a beautiful woman, and be immortalized in an epic poem. These are my goals in life.

May 9, 2005. Going Home

It was my last day in Italy. We all slept a little late and checked out around noon. We went down to the train station, got our tickets, and ate a light lunch before we caught our train back to Rome.

Mom and Dad had another day in Rome. They had reservations at the same hotel we stayed in earlier, and they talked a lot about seeing the Colosseum one more time. We knew I'd have to hurry once we got to Roma Termini, so we said our goodbyes on the train. When the train pulled into Termini, Mom gave me one last hug. It was her last chance to hug her son until Christmas, and she made it count. When she finally, reluctantly let go, I gave Dad a hug, said goodbye to both of them, and turned and ran to catch my next train. The last time I saw them they were standing on the binario checking their bags.

I caught the train to the airport just as it was leaving. Sprinting with a suitcase and a backpack is a pain in the ass. Fitting it all on an overloaded train is an even bigger pain in the ass. I promised myself I'd pack lighter on the next trip. I'll make that promise on the next trip, too. I do it every time.

The flight home was red eye from 8 pm in Rome to 10 pm in London to 6 am in Kuwait. I fell asleep over France and I woke up over Iraq. The plane touched down before I even knew I was home.

At the start of the trip, I said, “If this trip goes well, they might make more trips overseas in the future.” A week after I got back, my parents sent me an e-mail asking if I would join them in Paris next year. Based on that, I'd say the trip went very, very well.

May 8, 2005. Firenze. Mother's Day

My parents wanted to take me out to a nice dinner. I never decline free food. We went back to the hotel for a rest and a change of clothes. When the sun went down, we went out.

My dad doesn't wear suits. He has had one suit for the last fifteen years. He didn't even know how to tie a necktie. The one tie he owns is a zipper tie-a pre-knotted tie that you loop over your head and zip up like the fly of your pants. Before we left, I insisted that he buy a new suit. He broke down and bought a new one, but he hadn't worn it until that night. After I changed into my suit, he came down to my room for tips on how to wear his. I showed him how to knot a tie, how to check his dress line, and a dozen other little tips. Never button the bottom button of your jacket. Make sure all your leather (belt and shoes) and all your metal (belt buckle and wristwatch) match. Keep your shirt buttons and your zipper in line. Buy a cheap shirt, but never buy a cheap tie. Women fret over earrings. Men fret over ties.

He looked handsome, but very uncomfortable. If we had given him half an excuse, he would have torn off the suit and changed into jeans and a flannel shirt. My stream of advice made him more nervous, so I cut it off and just told him he looked great. Mom hooked her arm around his, and he finally relaxed.

We didn't know exactly where we wanted to eat, so we just wandered around the Piazza di Duomo for a while. The sun had set. The plaza was empty and quiet. We didn't see anything we liked, so we drifted toward the river. We spotted a little restaurant tucked away in an alley between two streets. All the good restaurants are tucked away in an alley between two streets. Italy's like that.

They gave us a seat outside. Mom and Dad looked like Lady and the Tramp eating spaghetti. We wished Mom a happy Mother's Day. I think that was the highlight of her trip. She got to dine at a Tuscan restaurant in Florence on a Spring night with her husband and her only son. That's a pretty good Mother's Day gift.

When he brought out our food, the waiter took a minute to size up Dad's suit. “That's a nice suit,” he said. I think Dad might have blushed, and he told the waiter it was Italian. The waiter asked, “Where did you get it?” Dad told him he bought in Indiana. The waiter smiled. “Then it's not an Italian suit.” Maybe it wasn't Italian. It was probably made in Singapore. But it was nice enough for an Italian to compliment it, and that made Dad's day.

We stuffed ourselves with steak and bread and wine and sweets. There wasn't anything that could top that meal, so we slowly drifted home and went off to sleep at the hotel.

May 8, 2005. Firenze

Our hotel had a little restaurant in the basement, and we met there for breakfast. My parents were as excited as they had been the day before. They had seen half of Florence the previous day. They still hadn't run out of energy. I tried to look smart by quoting passages from my guidebook, but they had already seen every place I mentioned. After a few minutes, we decided that they knew the city better than I did now, and they should plan the day.

The first stop was the Uffizi Gallery. It has the biggest art collection in Florence, but on that day it also had the longest line. We stood in line for an hour and barely moved. We decided that if we stayed there, the Uffizi would be the only sight we saw all day. Mom suggested we visit the Pitti Palace, so we jumped out of line and headed across the river.

Formerly a royal residence, the Pitti Palace houses five of the most important art museums in Florence. The day before, my parents had bought a combination ticket to all five galleries. Of the five, the Palatine Gallery was the only one they liked enough to visit again. The Palatine has a unique design. The paintings aren't organized in neat rows like in most museums. They're hung in clusters, and they cover the walls from ceiling to floor. Where the wall does peek through, you can see the frescoes painted there. It looks less like a museum and more like a noble's home. We thought Lorenzo Medici might drop by to give us a tour.

The gallery had an great exhibit on Catherine de'Medici, daughter of Florence and queen of France. There were dozens of paintings of Catherine, all in chronological order. The front of the gallery had portraits of Catherine as a baby and a little girl. Halfway through, an expansive salon was filled with paintings of her wedding (by proxy) to Henry II of France. The halls in the back of the gallery showed images of the queen, her husband, and her children. Interspersed with the portraits were paintings that Catherine commissioned from artists in Italy and France. It was an amazing intersection of history and art.

After the Palatine, we headed into the Boboli Gardens. The Gardens were built (they were definitely built, not grown) behind the Pitti Palace as a retreat for nobles and visiting royalty. They're the size of a small town, and I can imagine that a nobleman in the Palace could spend his whole time in Florence between the Palace and the Gardens. The rear of the Palace opens into a vast grass and gravel courtyard. A wide path leads upward into a small forest and then branches off into dozens of little paths between the trees. You could spend all day in those little dirt pathways, and you should. If you visit Florence, buy a few bottles of wine, get a nice loaf of bread and a basket, and spend a day picnicking in the Boboli Gardens.

We left the Palace and the Gardens and wandered back across the river. We wound up in yet another plaza listening to a gypsy band play traditional music. My parents' energy finally gave out. They sat on the steps next to a fountain and watched the gypsies play. I took a walk around the plaza and bought my mom one of the band's CDs. She told me later she listened to it all the way home.