Eating A la Turka

It has been warm and humid in Beirut recently. Not quite Louisiana hot, but pretty stuffy all the same. Jeff and I decided that the uncomfortably balmy weather provided the perfect excuse to head north for a little while, so last week we caught an early morning flight to Istanbul, Turkey!

When I say "an early morning flight," I mean early--as in 6am or so, which meant a 4am taxi ride to the Beirut airport. We found our sleep-deprived selves checked into our hotel and back out on the lovely streets of Istanbul by 10am. Our first stop was a delightful cafe where I got some great coffee and we read the English-language version of the local newspaper. By noon or so, we were starving, so we headed to a restaurant called "Cooking Alaturka" for lunch.

The restaurant is only open for lunch, as cooking lessons are offered in the evenings. Every day the woman who runs it offers a four-course set lunch menu, with the daily dishes determined by the seasonal produce available in the markets. We ate there twice, and both times were wonderful.

As its name suggests, the restaurant specializes in Turkish food. One day we had a traditional dish called "Imam Bayildi," which is a roasted eggplant stuffed with tomatoes, onions, and dill. Its name means "the Imam fainted," supposedly because an Imam (Muslim religious leader) fainted because it was so tasty. I don't doubt it!

We also had some fresh green beans with tomatoes and dill,a tasty soup of red lentils and bulgur--a grain that is ubiquitous in the Middle East, and a really good lamb stew that was served atop some baba-ghanoush-style roasted eggplant. Eggplant, tomatoes, and dill seem to be really popular in Turkey. A winning combination, to be sure.

For desert we had "Incir Tatlisi," or figs stuffed with walnuts and soaked in an interesting clove-flavored syrup. I'd never really had cooked figs before, Newtons aside, and I liked them.

Many restaurants serve glasses of tea, or cai, at the end of a meal. It always comes in cute but impractical handle-less glasses in nice, decorative saucers.

At Cooking Alaturka we were served a little dish of Turkish Delight or "lokum" after our meal, and even though I was entirely full after the soup, beans, stew, and figs, I had to try some. After all, I'd seen it for sale in the bazaar and markets all around Istanbul, and it looked appealing.

It was very...chewy. Even if the lokum was a bit disappointing, everything else about Turkey--the weather, the food, and the beautiful old buildings--was truly a delight!

Summer Visitor

It's been a hot, quiet, couple of weeks here in Beirut. Most of my ex-pat colleagues have headed back to the States or Europe for the summer, and many well-heeled Beirutis are spending their traditional looong weekends in their villas up in the cool, breezy mountains of Lebanon. I've been enjoying the quiet--getting some good work done on a new paper, trying to get to the gym more regularly, and going for evening strolls around the green and leafy campus.

While most of the AUB community seems to have flown the coop for the summer, we did get an unexpected visitor to our balcony the other day: a parakeet! Mind you, our place may look idyllic, set amidst palm trees and sweet-smelling jasmine bushes, but parakeet country it isn't. It was quite a surprise, then, Jeff spotted it on the railing the other day. It spent about fifteen minutes or so hopping around out there, and then flew away. Jeff emailed a photo of it to the Middle East Ornithological Association (which, oddly, is based in England and appears to be composed entirely of Brits). On their website we discovered that apparently there was at one time a breeding population of ring-necked parakeets on the AUB campus. However, our visitor was not of that flock.

Someone from the Association emailed him back the next day and said that the brightly-colored little squawker who visited us is an African Lovebird! There is no breeding population of them here, unfortunately, so our visitor must have been an escapee from somewhere. It certainly was nice to see him. I hope he stays out of reach of all the campus cats!

Meanwhile, we are getting ready for a quick trip to Istanbul and continuing to enjoy quiet summer days here. I'm sure before we know it, it will be time for the fall migration back to campus--the human kind, that is.

Sweet, sweaty Syria

Jeff and I recently returned from our second trip to Syria. This time we headed north to Aleppo, up near the Turkish border. We had a great trip...once we got into Syria, that is. It took us a good four hours for them to let us cross the border from Lebanon. Four hot, thirsty hours. Luckily we had a couple bagels (from our Beirut source) and some water with us, but it was still somewhat uncomfortable. On the other hand, we felt really victorious when we finally got across and headed to our hotel in the little town of Hama. Here's Jeff in front of one of the waterwheels, or norias, in Hama:

The next day we started sightseeing with gusto. First we visited the Musyaf castle, which the Crusaders conquered in the early 12th century. After the Crusaders, a sect known as "The Assassins" took it over.

I thought Musyaf was pretty impressive, but then we visited the ruins of Quala'at al-Hosen, or Krak de Chevaliers, which is by all accounts Syria's most grand and well-preserved castle.

It was, of course, blazing hot in Syria in late June, and the desert air was much dryer than Beirut's seaside humidity. The thing I noticed (and appreciated!) about both castles was their ability to maintain cool temperatures even in the mid-day heat. Those massive stone buildings were really quite practical desert structures.

We saw another fascinating bit of desert architecture when we visited what are commonly called "beehive houses." They are conical mud structures that used to be used as housing by the Bedouins who live in Syria's desert. Nowadays they are mostly used as storage, and the villagers live in more prosaic modern cement houses. One Bedouin family keeps a beehive house open for viewing by the few tourists who travel through, and we had tea with him inside it. The house had airholes at the bottom of it, and there was quite a nice draft coming through. It wasn't quite as cool inside as the massive stone castles, but it was very pleasant nonetheless.

Speaking of clever air conditioning methods, Jeff and I had dinner one night at a restaurant in a restored old building. We sat in the building's courtyard, and every so often jets of water would spray out and cool the area. It looked as nice as it felt.

Before leaving Hama, we also visited some Roman ruins at Apamea:

When we were finished sightseeing around Hama, we headed north to Aleppo. We had fun walking through the souk, or bazaar, and visiting the old citadel that dominates the town. Here we are atop the citadel:

After a day of walking the streets of Aleppo, we repaired to the Baron Hotel bar for some cold Turkish beer. The Baron Hotel is famous as the place where Agatha Christie stayed while writing Murder on the Orient Express. It was also frequented by T. E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia), whose bar bill is on display inside.

Before I say more about the sights we saw, I must say that the biggest thing I will remember about Syria is how incredibly nice and welcoming the people are. Everywhere we went, people asked where we were from. When we said "America," nearly everyone said that they were very glad that we were there, and that they hoped our country and theirs could be friends. Many, many people asked us to sit and talk with them and have tea. No one had anything good to say about former president Bush, but they were all able to separate American people from American politicians. One man said "American people good, Bush bad."

The most surprising, and moving, thing to me was that several women dressed head-to-toe in all-black hejab (in the heat!) went out of their way to be friendly to me. One kissed me on both cheeks and said (in rough English) that she hoped her daughter would be able to marry an American man. Another woman gave me some candy and smiled broadly. It was sweet how they went out of their way to make me feel welcome.

Another time, Jeff and I were walking past a tiny little tire shop and the proprietor waved us in, brought in some chairs for us, and handed us chilled bottles of cherry soda. We sat and drank soda and tried to make small talk despite the language barrier. For awhile we took turns naming American brands of tires! It was really funny, and just so sweet how hospitable they were.

We went on to visit another town to the south and saw some more ruins, including those at Ugarit, where a written alphabet dating from 2000 BC was found. I can barely imagine something that old. Also at Ugarit were ruins of temples to pagan deities Baal, the storm god, and his father, Dagon.

While all the sights (and sites) we saw were fascinating, it is the Syrians' genuine goodwill toward Americans that I will remember most. If an Arabic-speaking woman in full hejab were ever to go sightseeing in the U. S., I can only hope that Americans would be as hospitable to her as the Syrians were to us.

Happy 4th of July to all!