Category Archives: Travel

Have Felix, will travel

Iran, Iraq, Orientalism, Photography, Syria, Travel, Turkey

In 1924 Major F. A. C. Forbes-Leith decided to drive a “motor-car” from London to India, a journey that took almost half a year to traverse ten countries. Overall, a total of 8,527 miles were covered, with 3,000 of them devoid of road or track and 1,500 over desert, not to mention detouring around 150 broken bridges. This was three years before Lindy flew from Mitchell Field (next to the university I currently teach at) to France. The rationale for a ridiculously long auto adventure? That was simple: no one had done it before. As Major Forbes-Leith puts it, “Airplanes had already flown to India on several occasions, airships for a regular mail service were in the course of construction, even one of the submarines of the Royal Navy was on its way, but as yet no effort had been made to bridge the distance by mechanical transport.”

Attempting such an adventure at the time no doubt took a sense of humor. In this case the auto was labeled “Felix” after the cartoon character Felix the Cat. Continue reading Have Felix, will travel →

Peaks of Yemeni poetry he summons

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Poetry, Travel, Yemen


[The following is Najwa Adra’s review of two books by anthropologist Steven C. Caton, who conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Yemen in 1979-1981. It was first published in Yemen Update, #48 (2006):46-50.]


“Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe, by Steven C. Caton
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990
ISBN # 0-520-06766-5
351 pp., illus., maps, hardcover

Yemen Chronicle: An Anthropology of War and Mediation, by Steven C. Caton
New York, Hill and Wang, 2005
ISBN-13: 978-0-8090
341 pp., maps, no illus., hardcover (also available in paper)

Reviewed by Najwa Adra

“Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe and Yemen Chronicle: An Anthropology of War and Mediation, published 15 years apart, should be read as two complementary parts of a whole. They document Steven Caton’s field research on tribal poetry in Khawlan at-Tiyal in 1979-81. Together, these books are important contributions to theory in anthropology, the ethnography of Yemen, and perhaps literary theory and political science as well. The first book is a technical discussion of tribal poetry as cultural practice; the second is a personal, reflexive description of the author’s experiences in the field. It provides rich contextual data that shed light on, and help support, the author’s argument in the first book. Continue reading Peaks of Yemeni poetry he summons →

Iraq after a Millennium

Iraq, Iraq War, Islamic Sciences, Travel

There is an old saying, renewed whenever we reflect on contemporary politics: the more things change, the more they remain the same. A little over a millennium ago, the widely traveled scholar Shams al-Din Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad al-Muqaddasi wrote a geographical compendium of the world. He is as opinionated as any op-ed columnist, but also an astute observer of the foibles of his own time. So how did al-Muqaddasi, who had traversed much of the known Islamic world in his time, view Iraq? Here is his assessment; c’est la vie!

This is the region of men of refinement, the fountainhead of scholars. The water is delightful, the air marvelous; it is the chosen place of the khalifs. It produced Abu Hanifa, the jurist of jurisprudents; and Sufyan, the best of the Quranic Readers. From here came Abu ‘Ubayda, and al-Farra‘, and Abu ‘Amr, author of a system of Quranic reading. It is the birthplace of Hamza, and al-Kisa’i: of virtually every jurist, Reader, and litterateur; of notables, sages, thinkers, ascetics, distinguished people; of charming and quick-witted people. Here is the birthplace of Abraham, the Compansion of God, thither journeyed many noble Companions of the prophet. Is not al-Basra there, which can be compared to the entire world? and Baghdad, praised by all mankind? sublime al-Kufa and Samarra? Its river most certainly is of Paradise; and the dates of al-Basra cannot be forgotten. Its excellences are many and beyond count. The Sea of China touches its furthermost extremity, and the desert stretches along the edge of it, as you see. The Euphrates debouches within its limits.

Yet it is the home of dissension and high prices, every day it retrogresses; from injustice and taxes there is trouble, and distress. Its fruits are few, its vices many, and the oppression of the people is heavy.

[Excerpt from al-Muqaddasī, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions. Translated by Professor Basil Collins. Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2001.]

Strolling Through Tarlabasi

Anthropology/Sociology, Contemporary Art, Travel, Turkey


Tarlabasi, 2004, by Gamze Olgun, Oil Painting.

by Jenny White
Kamil Pasha Blog
Posted on January 24th, 2008

Tarlabasi is a district on the backside of the Beyoglu hill falling from the crest at Pera – where all the foreign embassies were in Ottoman times, now demoted to consulates – down in the direction of the Golden Horn. In The Abyssinian Proof, Kamil chases a wily criminal to his lair in Tarlabasi. The district is picturesque in the way of crumbling majesty on its last legs (a large part of Tarlabasi will be razed in 6 months, probably replaced by hotels). The steep, narrow lanes are strung with laundry, bustling with locals shopping at an outdoor market crammed into one of the lower streets. At the top of the hill near Istiklal Bouelvard are some lovely stone houses, now ruined or so shabby as to be nearly uninhabitable. A large stone house cracked down the side like an egg is posted for sale. As you walk down the hill, the houses become smaller, shabbier, sometimes outright ruins, less stone and more wood. In Ottoman times, Catholics and Greek Christians (Rum) lived near the top — shop owners, employees of the embassies — and poorer families near the bottom. Taylor Pepo’s apprentice lived in Tarlabasi with his family (The Abyssinian Proof). Today Tarlabasi is inhabited by Roma (gypsy), Kurds, the very poor, and social outcasts of various kinds. Continue reading Strolling Through Tarlabasi →

Norma’s Take on Carthage: Part Two

Orientalism, Photography, Travel, Tunisia


The Café in the Place Halfaouine.

In an earlier post I provided the Orientalist musings of Ms. Norma Octavia Lorimer, whose By the Waters of Carthage (1925) is classic put-down travel mongrelism. If you thought the first part was bad, read on below…

“OH, MY DEAR!

Come and take me to the desert; it lies over there, in the great Beyond, like Death — waiting — waiting — waiting.

I have seen camels in their proper atmosphere, lading their common everyday life of indifference, though so far, I must admit, I have not seen them trying to get through the eye of a needle. These strange supercilious leavings of the prehistoric past are almost as scornful of mankind as new-born babies. A Horse looks as foolishly modern besides a camel as an Englishman in his blue serge suit looks beside a burnoused and biblical Moslem…

I have been in the souks (bazaars), and it is true that there above all places you can hear the East ‘a-calling’; it is there that you forget that Tunis is under French protection and it has fine boulevards and theatres and a Petit Lourve, for all that is on the other side of the horseshoe gate (the porte de France, as it is called), and my hotel is within in. It is in the bazaars before midday that you get a glimpse of how the people live, for the pulse of the city is there, if an Arab city has a pulse. Continue reading Norma’s Take on Carthage: Part Two →

Norma’s Take on Carthage

Orientalism, Travel, Tunisia

Thousands of English and American travelers have written about their experiences in the Arab World. Quite a few are worth reading, but the majority deserve obscurity. In a recent book sale at my university library, a pitiful travel account of the roaring 20s was remaindered. It bodes well for my institution that it was never checked out, although I wonder how it entered the stacks in the first place. The book in question is By the Waters of Carthage, by Norma Octavia Lorimer, following on her By the Rivers of Sicily and By the Rivers of Egypt. Why she never set sail down the Tigris by the reggae-beloved rivers of Babylon is anyone’s guess. This baneful little volume about a fickle English lady set loose in Tunis represents just about everything wrong with Orientalist inferiorizing of cultures in the Middle East. The only redeeming features are the colorful frontispiece (shown above) and black-and-white photographs of life in Tunisia around 1920.

Sometimes it is useful to read bad text in order to appreciate good travel writing all the more. There is probably no bias that does not surface in Lorimer’s diary-prone prose, all the more chauvanized by her style of filling her chapters with letters to her dear husband. Consider the following tidbits… Continue reading Norma’s Take on Carthage →

Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (2)

Food and Drink, Sanaa, Travel, Yemen

The infamous “Black Sambo” image.

Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (Part Two)


[Note: These observations were first published in 1991 in Yemen Update and are archived online. The “Boston” has long since disappeared, but memories live on. For Part One, click here.]

Let me introduce you to the other guests besides myself, Flo and Eddy. At the table in front of me sat two Egyptian men who were soon joined by two Frenchmen. There was a rather abrupt shift from Cairene Arabic to French (or at least a form of French). What struck me was not the Egyptian or the French dialects, but the visual message on the back of a t-shirt worn by one of the French diners. This might have been purchased anywhere, of course, since all these designs are mumbo-jumbled internationally. First of all the color of the t-shirt was that of over-ripe banana pulp (it really was). Emblazoned on the back were four figures, each of them a replica of the racist “Black Sambo” image of Blacks in America during the “Amos ‘n Andy” era. One of these caricatures was boxing, another surfing, and so on. I suppose it was supposed to communicate nothing significant and for the most part it did here in Yemen. But I was somewhat appalled and was tempted to ask the fellow, whose back was a billboard for my face, to take off his shirt and wear it backwards (assuming only the over-ripe banana exuded on the front). Continue reading Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (2) →

Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (1)

Food and Drink, Sanaa, Travel, Yemen

Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (Part One)

[Note: These observations were first published in 1991 in Yemen Update and are archived online. The “Boston” has long since disappeared, but memories live on.]

It was a bright and breezy Friday afternoon in Sanaa. Having only recently arrived to the Sheba Hotel, I decided to forego experiencing the haute cuisine available in my room or at poolside for a Lebanese repast at the “Bostan Restaurant”. This Levantine oasis in Yemen is located only a stone’s throw away from the great wall of the Chinese Embassy on the road that parallels Zubeiri Street. On the sign outside you are welcomed to the “Bostan Tourism Restaurant”, although the astute diner will note that on the menu cover this metamorphoses into “Boustan”. (Perhaps the menu cover was printed in Paris? The French seem to love adding the letter “u” to words that can be perfectly well pronounced without: when I see “Bilquis” my tongue utterly fails). Continue reading Observations on the Baboons in the Garden of the “Bostan” Restaurant (1) →