Traveling

Posted on July 7, 2008 by iPouya

Hello Hello! Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve actually been traveling the Middle East. I received a couple scholarships to study intermediate Arabic at the American University in Beirut so I took the opportunity to plan trips for before and after. I spent about 10 days in Istanbul, Turkey and Damascus, Syria before arriving in Beirut and I’ve been here for about 2 weeks now. After the program, I hope to go to the UAE and then I’m flying back home from Egypt. It’s been a fulfilling yet exhausting few weeks. I’ve met some of the most random people and have had some of the most random conversations in many places.  In my upcoming posts, I will share with you my experiences in the region but I must give you a disclaimer: In no way do my experiences and the people I’ve talked to represent all of Turkey, Syria, or Lebanon. They just represent what I’ve seen and what specific people have been willing to share with me. I dislike it immensely when people travel and talk to like 5 people and pass of their views as representing the whole populace and I will not be doing that here.

In any case, while in Turkey I had the good fortune of meeting with a Kurdish friend of mine and his friends and family. It was interesting to hear them discuss the issue of identity. One insisted that he was a Turkish citizen and that the Turkish flag was his own, while the other proclaimed he was Kurdish first. I talked to secular and religious Turks who expressed nothing but admiration for Ahmadinejad and Shaykh Nasrallah. One man barely understood English but when he heard the name Ahmadinejad, he just flexed his muscle signifying that the Iranian president represented strength. The image I had of Turkey before I got there was that Turkish society had been rendered non-religious after decades of Kemalist ideology but it was interesting to see, at least on a superficial level, how religious some of the most westernized segments of Turkish society remained.

I played backgammon with shop keepers (who had nothing on me by the way :)) and it was interesting to see how apolitical individuals nevertheless expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause and expressed nothing but disdain for Israel.

What else? While in my hotel room, I tried to go on youtube.com to watch some Dave Chappelle stand up comedy and I was little surprised to see youtube blocked in Turkey (Both youtube and facebook and many blogs on blogger.com were blocked in Syria).

I should also say that Istanbul was very geared towards foreign tourists, almost to the point where it seemed like it had lost its identity. Not that I know what Istanbul’s identity was before the rise of its tourism industry, but I am sure that it has lost much of its character in the process. I can’t say the same about Damascus but I will tell you about the Arab capital next time.

In Peace,

iPouya

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96 Responses to Traveling

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  1. Sandra Nunez-Saif says:
    July 7, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    I appreciate the fact that you emphasize how everything you say is just based on your individual experience, not a generalization of how these countries are..the more you travel, your mind expands,and so does your heart, and the more you know, you realize that you don’t know. Thank you for sharing your experiences, it’s very interesting for me to see how you look at things around the world. I know you may be pretty busy in Beirut, but please find some time to write! It’s good to know how life is like in that side of the world, and to read about it while here in the States! So good and inspiring!

    Keep running-
    Sandra
    “I want to flee toward a perpetual dawn w a swiftness and relentless that leaves no room for remorse,regret or repentance.’

  2. :) says:
    July 8, 2008 at 5:10 am

    Its always important to refer to public opinion polls when you want to guage the attitudes of entire populations. I have also found it laughable when people use their “friends” of “people they know” to generalize attitudes of an entire society. Of course, whenever we want to find non-scholarly, unsourced, and unsubstantiated arguments, we can always turn to Arash. He once used the fact that he had “Lebanese friends” to show that his support for the bombardment of Lebanon was supported by most Lebanese!

  3. :) says:
    July 13, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    Zionism’s respect for the human rights of children on display:
    “Report, Defence for Children International-Palestine Section, 10 July 2008 “:A 10-year-old boy was subjected to physical abuse amounting to torture for 2.5 hours by Israeli soldiers who stormed his family’s shop on 11 June, seeking information on the location of a handgun. The boy was repeatedly beaten, slapped and punched in the head and stomach, forced to hold a stress position for half and hour, and threatened. He was deeply shocked and lost two molar teeth as a result of the assault.

    Remember, Arash is a Zionist. Perhaps he was beaten as a child.

  4. :) says:
    July 13, 2008 at 1:52 pm

    I do agree with the people who say Zionism is not equivlaent to apartheid:
    “”Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the restrictions endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa.””
    From the independent.

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