While in Bergen to lecture at the university I came across a couple of signs that begged to be photographed. It seems like kebab and pizza are always together here, even under the mantra of nirvana.
Category Archives: Travel
A Madventure in Yemen
Take two rather weird Finns, a camera and a mountain of jocularity. The result is one of the stranger travelogues you will ever encounter: Madventures YEMEN. This film was made shortly after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in 2008. The two travelers are hardly experts on Yemen and much of what they say (about tribes and geography, for example) should be taken with a grain (at times a pillar worthy of Lot’s wife) of salt. But I love this film, once you get by the Ali-G-ness of the two f-ing (a word they use to the hilt) Finns. First, the cinematography is fantastic and you hear from a number of Yemenis, who often make far more sense than their guests. Second, it does not treat qat as a drug and the Yemenis come across as anything but the “terrorists” portrayed in the media. Indeed, at one point, the traveler Rika notes that despite the number of weapons in Yemen it probably has less crime than the country you are watching the film from.
Check it out and enjoy…
There are three parts to the film available on Youtube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
On camels
In a previous post I published photographs from a book by Samuel Zwemer, an American missionary who spent several years in Yemen and other parts of Arabia. His Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country, written with his daughter Amy, is an entertaining read. Not surprisingly they dwell at length on camels…
Gems of Arabic Literature #3: On Sicily
With the virtual flood of book digitalization online quite a few obscure books are now available online either at archive.org or through Google. I recently came across a gem: a translation of a high school Arabic text used in Aden by the British at the start of the 20th century. The title page was shown in a previous post. The full text can be downloaded as a pdf here. The excerpt below is from Ibn Jubayr’s travel account of a visit to Sicily. The Arabic text of Ibn Jubayr can be downloaded in pdf form here. Since my grandfather (hence the name Varisco) came from near Palermo, I take great pleasure in providing his account here.
Tabsir Redux: “when I asked him what a Moslem was”
According to all three major monotheisms even God needed time to take a rest and so the sabbath was created. With the spate of mosque bombings, torture of prisoners and outright mayhem dominating the news about the Middle East these days, it might help to sit back and read what the American humorist Mark Twain wrote about his Missouri-born creation Tom Sawyer set loose in the Holy Land more than a century ago. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: “when I asked him what a Moslem was”
Picturing Aden a Century Ago
“Water carts used at Aden to bring water from the wells to the city.”
In a previous post I published a chapter from the 1911 book Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country by Samuel and Amy Zwemer. The book has several photographs of Aden and the surrounding area, which are well worth a look a century later.
“The Big Camel market in the crater at Aden where we preached our first sermon in 1891.”
Tabsir Redux: A Taylor Made Bath in Damascus
The American man of letters Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was one of many travelers to the Near East of his time. His tour in 1853 resulted in a travel account above the common lot of Holy Land roller overs. Of particular interest is his frank account of a Turkish bath in Damascus.
“The Bath is the ‘peculiar institution’ of the East. Coffee has become colonized in France and America; the Pipe is a cosmopolite, and his blue, joyous breath congeals under the Arctic Circle, or melts languidly into the soft airs of the Polynesian Isles; but the Bath, that sensuous elysium which cradled the dreams of Plato, and the visions of Zoroaster, and the solemn meditations of Mahomet, is only to be found under an Oriental sky. The naked natives of the Torrid Zone are amphibious; they do not bathe, they live in the water. The European and Anglo-American wash themselves and think they have bathed; they shudder under cold showers and perform laborious antics with coarse towels. As for the Hydropathist, the Genius of the Bath, whose dwelling is in Damascus, would be convulsed with scornful laughter, could he behold that aqueous Diogenes sitting in his tub, or stretched out in his wet wrappings, like a sodden mummy, in a catacomb of blankets and feather beds. As the rose in the East has a rarer perfume than in other lands, so does the Bath bestow a superior purification and impart a more profound enjoyment… Continue reading Tabsir Redux: A Taylor Made Bath in Damascus
Yemen in 1911
A century ago Yemen was still very much a terra incognita for Europeans and Americans. The British controlled the port of Aden, but few individuals were allowed to travel up through the highlands to visit the realm of the Zaydi imam. One of the few was Samuel Zwemer, an American missionary who spent several years in Yemen and other parts of Arabia. His desire to convert Arabs to Christianity seeps through his description, but the photographs published in his Zigzag Journeys in the Camel Country, written with his daughter Amy, are valuable documentation. I attach below a chapter on a trip he made up to Sanaa a century ago. The photographs will follow in a future post. For an earlier post on Zwemer, click here.
