If I'm Starting Again

Back to work, some semblance of normal life hopefully I’ll learn to write for myself again, bigger pages mean bigger ideas I should buy a notebook the size of my room, sleep in the fold of a page, write words with my body language burn thoughts into the page that can be seen from space. Back to life here. Back to tight-fisted purse-clenching watching my foot on the gas to save the gas to save the money, pulling with all my might to make the ends meet. I’m used to it. Doesn’t mean I like it.

People jabber and talk jive non-stop over here so I plug up my ears like I’m building a house with my own two hands. They jitter and titter on about nothing. And me-
“it’s so quiet here”. “boy, it’s sure weird to be home.” “India was good-yeah, it was amazing. So many incredible experiences”. “I definitely wanna go back”.
You forget the meaning of an experience when you continue to go on about it in a meaningless way. I would say.

But these streets are sure bare.

I says to K, I says, I don’t know why people say Vancouver has no character… it definitely has a character, I just don’t know if I like it. Rainy day coffee shops and hybrid crosses between yuppies and hippies in fleeces and lulus skiers and sailors in late-model cars so laaii-id back, so polite, Canada bland and character lite. There’s not a lotta colour here the pallet is blue and gray. Not much I should say when I’m as dry as the rest of these crackers. Broken or fixed. Broken or fixed.
It’s good to be home.
But it’s hard to concentrate. All this jabbering.

* * *

I can’t wait to go back to Bombay someday. It already feels like a clamorous muffle behind me, around the corner.

Echoes for a while, I’m sure.

These echoes are mine but it’s like trying to clutch time by the love-handles. Slippery past. Fish-skin memories.
These experiences sew themselves inside you though, a tailored onion-skin; We grow inwards. Inward-growing onions, skin by skin. Peel by peel.

I hope this’ll be a layer I can taste until my last breath.

India.

It’s not an ending if I’m starting again.
Another circle around the centre, the peel forming.
It’s not an ending if I’m starting again.

That's starting to make some sense now.

The Neighbourhood

Dear diary, it’s been a while since I called you that. It’s hot in this city, I feel like I need to shower three times a day. I can’t keep up with the shirts. White’s turning gray. I sit in these stuffy cabs, little hot pods trawling through the swarming madness and noise of this traffic. I turn the driver’s meters on myself now, though, to avoid arguments. Click that little flag down outside the car. Tip 10 rupees. That’s water for nearly a week if you live in the slum.

I been down there a few times these last couple days. I didn’t want to sit around, this city needs so much help. This country. I found Dev through some googling and emailing. He runs Down to Earth- a charity organization for slum kids. It’s not big, it’s not old. Dev got a hut built on stilts in the middle of the slum beside the World Trade Center, South Bombay. It’s beside a vacant lot that’s a CEO’s helicopter landing pad and a popular cricket ground for the kids. Open space is precious.

A couple youth that live in this ‘neighbourhood’ are helping Dev out- he wants these kids to build confidence and knowledge, so he facilitates school-type learning as well as recreational; sports and arts. These young guys are helping kids from the different slum areas put on a show- mainly dancing. The kids are out of school now, so they rehearse every day. I’m too late to help out with the show, so I’m teaching the young guys guitar- they’ve always wanted to learn. I bought em a travel guitar which Dev will let them have when they’re ready- he doesn’t believe these kids should accept too many handouts because it breeds dependence which destroys confidence and ambition.

The ‘neighbourhood’ I’ve been shown around twice so far- once by Dev, who spends most his free time there, and once by Sameer, who lives in the middle of it. I don’t like the word slum sometimes- because millions of people in this city call these places home- they make these places Home by the sweat of their brow. But at the same time, ‘neighbourhood’ or ‘village’ conveys the wrong images. The hotel room I’m sitting in right now is more than twice the size of Sameer’s home- he lives there with his mother and father, grandfather, sister and her 2 infants. A neat little kitchen area in the corner occupies about three square feet of floor space, with modest tin dishes hung on the wall. They have been here for longer so they’re lucky enough to have a hut made from cement- newer arrivals have to become architectural artists in the medium of corrugated metal, plastic, jute, bamboo and palm leaves. Down where the mangroves used to be the huts teeter on stilts and the filthy Bombay tide washes underneath their floor as they sleep. These are illegal homes, though. Where Sameer and my other students live is a ‘legal’ slum, and one that’s lucky enough to garner a little government attention. The narrow walkways that used to be a sludgy muck have been crudely paved. Electricity is no longer stolen from the nearest office building but is provided by wires strung at eye-level down the walkways. The toilet is no longer the nearest garbage dump or beach- a three-story tiled shithouse has been erected for the thousands of residents here- 1 rupee per shit. The water is privatized- a man comes around noon everyday in a truck, and doles it out from a black plastic well. Women scramble and cuss in jostling queues with all manner of plastic containers- 20 litres is 2 rupees. Most fill 2 large containers- cooking and drinking water for the whole family for the next 24 hours.

It is a mad little world. Privacy is non-existent. Dogs prowl and are known to bite and the air is thick with flies and dust. Women work in the houses, cleaning, cooking, caring. If the mother is away during the day sweeping floors in the nearby high-rises then the eldest daughter takes care of the chores. This is a mindset Dev is working to change. Almost no girls have joined his activity programs- their parents think it’s a waste of time for them. Even school is a waste of time for the girls. Most of the women here can’t read the names and numbers on the buses they take to work- which are written in Hindi. But Dev is patient. He figures if he can prove the worth of his programs with the boys then more girls may be allowed to join.

I just wish I had more time. Dev say any contact these kids can have with an outsider is good- it opens their eyes to learn little by little of the big world outside their tiny cramped one. And hopefully open minds can look beyond the workaday struggle of their parents and see possibilities of college studies and less mind-numbing, low-paying labour jobs. It’s hard to break out. But Sameer has studied to be a chef at a local college- he hopes to find work in one of the bigger hotels.

I don’t get sad when I walk around the slums. I see poverty like I’ve never seen before and people living in ways I didn’t think people could live. I see people surviving and kids being kids, which they’ll do wherever they are. I mostly look around and see so much that needs to be done and wish I had more time here. These people are virtually ignored in the economic boom that is India and they stab themselves in the back with their cultural norms- the illiterate women, the alcoholic and abusive men, the large families and kids becoming their parents. Dev must feel like he’s looking up a forested mountain which he needs to clear of every tree; chip-chip-chipping away with the ax at that very first one. He must be so overwhelmed. But he’s here everyday. Trying to let these kids know that they can pull themselves out of this world. Trying to give them the tools.

I’m just teaching guitar. Hoping the older guys will pass on the knowledge. The seeds of music. Telling the kids about what I do, where I come from. That the world’s actually a pretty big place though it may not seem like it.

Burning Twigs

Standing in my tower gazing down at the slums. Some king. This city goes forever. If I had a speed-dating service, 5 minutes meeting with everyone that lives in the range of my vision, could I complete the rounds in my lifetime? In an hour I’d meet 12 people, in an 8-hour workday, 96. 100 people a day. 500 a week. About 22000 a year with a few weeks off.. 220 000 in a decade. And in a lengthy 50-year career of briefly getting to know as many Bombayites as I can, I’d reach a grand total of approximately 1.1 million. Within the bounds of my vision from the top of this castle tower, modern day fortress of luxury, immune to the fracas and frenzy of the street-dwellers below, there are probably more than 10 million souls. Beyond the pollution haze and deeper into the Northern suburbs are probably another 5 million. There are too many souls to count.

No wonder they worship so many gods here- hard to imagine a single god’s army of answering machines, blinking like distant stars, ‘You have 280,161,544 messages’. Prayers flood upward, translucent puffs of smoke, rainbow in the sun like oil on tarmac, they grow thick in the stratosphere, oily, airborne rivers are born, cascades of invisible rainbows lost between here and space, angels caught in the prayer paste like cormorants in oil spills, slick and frightened, suffocating from the Earth’s truths, humanity’s silent desperation and terrible fate. Beings of light floundering in invisibility, broken by spider-webs where the black meets the blue. Couldn’t it be we’re fending for ourselves? Temporarily, at least. Ant farmers. Science project employees. Truth is, I’m no further down the road than when I started. Been through the Holy Land where some kids have bombs and some have guns, some live in mansions and others in slums. Where the world’s greatest prophets rose to the sky, and the people cry because they finally made it. I’ve been through the land where Buddha was born, bisected by the holy Ganges, the sustainer, lifeblood of Shiva and Vishnu and Brahma.

And I’m starving. I am dug deeper into my disbelief. I keep building this fence so high and I won’t be able to sit on it, gaze out, search for that truth on the horizon. This wall made of twigs I been tearing out of the forest. I’m screaming in this dark forest, the treetops are warm in sunlight and I’m scrabbling in pine-needles, tearing at branches and twigs, rippin em off the trees for firewood, for my fence, to keep warm and tall- but standing on a wall of broken twigs doesn’t bring me towards the treetops- I’m not closer. I just have lots of fuel to burn- this is what I’ve earned with my rational mind. If God isn’t on lunch, if he did indeed give me a brain, then why does it seem to lead me further and further away? The more I think, the more I look around, the more reasons I find to avoid this whole scene. And no, I’m not ignoring my heart, Joe Christ, it’s beating loud and strong, I’m fierce with my love and I’m listening hard. Wilderness of words here, I’m lost again.

It’s all or nothing, I think sometimes. I see the Buddhist monks in Ladakh- saffron robes and shorn skulls. I think of their quiet minds, their connection to the soul of the Universe which is their soul, their Middle Path, their truth and tranquility. And the next day I see poor boys who didn’t want to be farmers like their fathers, who spend their mother-given lives sitting cross-legged, eyes closed on mountaintops, so silent and alone that their minds play tricks and give them false paradises. While they never know the love of a woman, never see the sights of their planet or know the warmth of a stranger’s home a thousand miles away from theirs. It is All. Or Nothing. You want enlightenment, you better suit up and dive in- there’s no halfway. You think Jesus died for your sins? That a man, the son of God, took iron nails through his flesh and bone, hung in the heat with blood in his eyes until his very ribcage gave out and suffocated him- that a man did this as his ultimate teaching, his ultimate sacrifice- if people would only see it and rejoice in God? Then for you there is no halfway; there is no, ‘I like some of the things the Bible has to say’- Jesus knew it was the book of his father. It is the book. You better jump in. And yet I see the hate. And the one-track minds. I can see that people might say that they love their neighbours as themselves, but then they distrust them because of their culture, their religion, their sexuality. I see people who have jumped into faith, and from the top of my fence I see that I don’t like the way they behave. I don’t like how they see people, the world. How can I possibly jump in? Testing the waters with toes, that’s me. On the shore for eternity.

And so it comes back- I will look for the wisdom in these books made by man- these Bibles and Qu’rans. I’ll look for the wisdom in how holy people live, the recognition of the good in everyone, the soulful practicalities of having membership in the human beast. But it is all Wisdom. It is tied to the very earth by a spinal column and two strong legs. It isn’t whistling in the winds with the prayer vapours. It isn’t the singing spirit. That is all or nothing. And right now I’m busy burning twigs.

Wailing at the Walls

They took Jesus down from the cross over here. Under this stone is where they washed the blood from his wounds. People are crying. Here’s where his cross stood. People are crying. This is where the first Tower of David stood. It was demolished. People are crying. Wailing. Over there’s where Mohammed ascended to heaven. I’m sure they’re crying too. I feel like crying. People come from all over the world to moan and wail over a pile of stones, over a hole in the floor; for the past. Meanwhile, people still die for these memories, these ashes. Surely somewhere a clean Jesus or a heaven-bound Mohammed are crying too, looking down through telescopes-for-a-quarter from on high, looking down at the antswarms around the holy sites, shouting Look up, Look around, Look forward, not back, and for God’s sake forgive each other for once.
There’s a lot to cry about around here. And everybody tends to look the same when they cry. I wish they’d realize that.

I put a little letter in the wailing wall too. While people wailed. Swayed and nodded at the stones. Most the big crevices were over-flowing. Found a little nub emerging from the smooth stone, tucked my note in its tooth.

Traveling Curse

VI- Amman, etc.

Isn’t that just the traveling curse, meeting people who become fast friends in a mere 2 days, then being untimely ripped from them as the friendship is mid-bloom. There is yin and yang to this system. I respect Qasim so much, we are like kindred spirits in many ways. I feel for his sorrow, he is an intellectual outsider in his own society. I don’t know what to say. But he has such good in him. I just feel sad. Sad. Off on another lonely bus.

Belly dancing prancing dancer jingly jangles, a time gone by, those Wahhabis ruined it for everybody, now I don’t get to see no Arabic girls shake their shakers, janglin hips, hiding in their hijabs. -God made girls for men, for men and men only, it must get lonely in the house I’m thinking. I don’t make eye contact with most of them. Trying to be “respectful”. Sometimes I do though. Specially the ones in the burqas. Sly big brown eyes are peering through a slit, furtive glance at the foreigner. A little curious perhaps? Kill the infidel!!
I’ve got Arak in the brain. Distilled four times in “wooden” barrels, so the bottle says, made from asine seeds. Taste like sweet ouzo, looks like milk or a sperm donor sample if you add water. feel fuzzy like a peach.
At the Turkish baths steam kept making my eyes sweat and my vision’s still blurry. Then the little guy comes out in BugleBoy jean shorts to scrub me down with something like a camel-hair loufah. Taps my back when I should turn over. Pours soothing warm water over me to wash away that dead skin. Then they change my loincloth and another guy massages oil into my back, arms and legs. Doesn’t linger long on the feet- curses and drat! Drums my back too. I don’t go get massages often. They usually hurt. Plus I associate them with sex and I’m nervous my blood will betray me and pool in the wrong place at the wrong time, by association. Fortunately not. I lie on the side-bench with the tube pillows when it’s done, look at the ceiling, listen to Arabic football on the TV, wait for my tea to cool.

Last night Nahar wants me to come to this pre-wedding street party. We catch a cab and head to East Amman. How come the rougher sides of cities are almost always the east? East LA, East London, East Vancouver. We ask someone where the party at, but our eardrums are already telling us. It’s a sausage-fest street party bachelor night, light-bulbs strung from telephone poles, synthesizers set to “Arabic”, and a guy wailing on the mic. Plastic chairs all around, head-covered women leaning to watch from upper-story balconies as the young men, arm in arm, dance around in a half-circle, step, step, all together, KICK, step, step, squat, KICK- the kid with the pit-stains and the wooden stick leading the way, feet this way and that, I’ve never seen so many men dancing together except at punk shows, but that’s not really dancing, now is it? Step, step, turn-and-kick, laughing, stumbling, drunk from paper-bag booze down the street, just watery tea and pastries allowed here, the guy with the feathers and traditional red pajamas will see to that. Now the groom is hoisted on a plastic chair, his father laughing, shouting to Be Careful in Arabic, probably remembering his chair-hoisting day years ago, and then CRACK CRACK, the greasy hair in the corner returns his revolver to the small of his back after letting off a couple celebratory rounds. -That’s nothing, says Nahar, In the village it’d be everybody doin it and they’d all have Kalashnikovs. Now I’m wondering how many of these drunken dudes are packin heat, barely a woman in sight, testosterone thick in the air. But it’s pure joy- they take turns leading the dance with the leading stick, jumping over it, twirling it, passing it on, singing along, more gunshots ring out while me and Nahar sip contraband Amstel. What is the bride doing right now, while this is going on? I ask. Nahar says, She’s probably having a party with her friends, dancing and singing too. A house-party though. Indoors. They gotta stay indoors.

Twigs

V- Amman cont.

Me and Nahar hit the bars last night. No, it isn’t all camels and burqas- girls in tight jeans with blonde highlights, muscle-bound tight-tee boytoys sipping cosmopolitans on the patios- sounds like somewhere I know..
Amman has this part. Like Bombay. The upper mids, the daddy’s Mercedes kids- I guess I should’ve expected it in a big city.

Me and Nahar share pitchers of local Amstel beer. He explains King Abdullah to me, the ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with his self-appointed advisors and “publicly” appointed puppet parliament. He tells me to hush when I exclaim, You guys are ruled by a f-ing King?? Hey, this is Jordan, man. And the royalty was originally appointed by the Brits, no less, to earn public support for the revolt against the Turks in the 20s. King Abdullah’s gigantic photos and banners are everywhere, public billboards and private shrines, and he lives in palaces and makes decrees. Decrees! He’s a king!

More beer, more chat, it’s good for that. Me and my new Jordanian friend getting drunk together, my mind getting educated through the haze. It’s a strange case of realities here. I ask Nahar if people date; Girls will go out with a guy more than a few times only if they’re seriously considering if he’s marryable. Will they have sex? No- they may make out, do other things- but virginity is a woman’s honour. Men in this society have many ways of being honourable, he says- their work, their piety.. Women have only one way, and it’s between their legs.
And men don’t have female friends. Nahar went to play squash at the University with a female European friend of his who’s living in Amman- they wouldn’t let them on the court. Then, a couple weeks ago Nahar found a comfortable two-bedroom apartment to move into, and his European friend suggested they become room-mates. When the landlord discovered this idea (the potential roomie came over to look at the place), he screamed the house down, accused them of filth and sin, ordered them out, and Nahar lost the apartment. It’s hard to imagine this surrounded by the university crowd here, laughing and smoking hookah. These traditions run deep. These twigs, these pine needles obscuring the tree-trunk of spirituality for humanity. These rules. Nothing but twigs.

Nahar’s a gentle guy. An articulate but soft-spoken guy. A guy who wore a camouflage uniform to every day of public high school in Syria, just like every other kid, and knew how to dismantle and reconstruct an assault rifle by the age of 16, just like every other kid. –Everyone in the Middle East keeps a gun in their house, he says. Nobody trusts the government. They could be toppled tomorrow and people want to be able to fend for themselves.
People laugh on the patio. The waitress is Filipino, local women don’t normally work after dark. There’s guns under the pillows. Guns under the pillows… We finish the pitcher.

Like This

IV- Amman

I hope tomorrow to find an oud. A real one, not a souvenir piece of shit. Qasim is hosting me, he said he’d go with me. Qasim has sadness in his eyes. He’s separated from his wife recently, and the 15-year old daughter has gone too. But 20-year old Mahmud is with Qasim - they stick together. You can see Mahmud loves and respects his father immensely, it is a beautiful thing to witness.

Drinking tea after downing a Ukrainian omelette another guest taught him how to make, Qasim and I talk about the cancer of religion. He reads and reads and he knows so much. He tells me the historical facts of Mohammed, the baselessness of Wahhabi claims to Quranic truth which they use to control simple-minded people. Sounds like Catholics 500 years ago. He tells me how this sect has infiltrated places like Egypt and Jordan in the last 25 years, how before them Muslims were spiritual but free to have choice and live their daily lives as they saw fit. Qasim tells me how when he worked in Saudi Arabia for 2 months a while back, if you were caught walking down the street during prayer time the religious police would give you a beating. These are the Wahhabis. They began giving free lectures in Egypt and Jordan in the eighties, handing out free hijabs to the women, and by the mid-80s suddenly the women are all covering their heads. It’s like this, yanni, says Qasim, like this. And his wife held out, kept her head bare till she started to feel naked amongst all her covered friends. She began wearing the hijab. And husband and wife began to grow apart. While Qasim learns more and more about the origins of monotheism, the links to Sumerians, the truth behind Quranic tales, he begins picking his way toward God- peeling back layers, searching for the truth. God gives us a brain, yanni, he says, so that we may use it to think and to find our way to him. But this talk scares Qasim’s wife, and it scares his friends, the fear of wrath and fire is embedded in them from childhood, from society- husband and wife grow still further apart.

It’s a quiet house, here. Qasim reads for hours everyday, picking his way toward God, making his own path- it’s a search for truth I can relate to. I guess God gave me a brain too…

A Sniff

III- More Petra

Nothing hits harder than the music knife to the heart, nothing makes you miss home more, “nothing feels better than blood on blood”, the Boss competing with the sunset over Petra and the call to prayer. Sunset’s like my call to prayer, too. It’s when I reflect- reflect like a windshield in the drowning western sun, take what the day has given me and shine it out there, most times to no-one.
What’s really going on, what’s the buzz, Al-Jazeera TV for the masses, oh yeah there’s a world out there, this is some real news, and they’re showing truck bombs in Afghanistan and I’m covering my mouth with my hand, but this isn’t hype, it’s truth. Or pretty close for the media anyway. I watch as much Al-Jazeera as I can, I’m a learning robot. Wish we had news at home. Now I’m here in the Middle East, half a day’s drive from Iraq, (like driving to Kamloops, or Portland), the familes on TV aren’t just digital puppets anymore, tragic marionettes. They are families. They run super-markets. Their kids give them hell. This sounds clitchy, but I understand these images a little better all of a sudden. Men weeping, walking behind coffins, blood on the streets- I’ve seen the streets here, and they look the same. Streets shouldn’t have blood on. People are people, most of em peaceful, if I had the balls I’d go to Iraq and see for myself, but I don’t want to be kidnapped to prove someone’s point. I just understand a little more now.

Jordan flags are in every car and the Arabic- beautiful and thick like caramel in the throat, but you haven’t heard an argument till you hear it in Arabic. I’m just trying to finish my shwarma, guys, but the kid with the ponytail, the Che shirt, the eyeliner is yelling hot caramel at the waiter, and then there’s attempted punches, a kick to the chest that connects, I’m so hungry I slide the extra chair in beside me, but keep chewing. Everyone holds everyone back. The kid was being rude to the Egyptian waiter because he’s Egyptian. I could see the kid was trouble, you don’t need to speak the language to know. Finished that shwarma. Climbing mountains will make you hungry.

I climbed two more today. The usual style of my youth- fuck the trail. Climbed up sneaky around a temple where no-one could see me to yell at me to stop, worked my way up chimneys, down gorges, a canyon labyrinth, leaving arrows made of branches to find my way back down these sandstone faces. Three hours later I reach the top and I get my rewards- bits of Nabatean staircase, worn, here and there, a cave temple and my very own sacrificial altar. I don’t think anyone makes it up to this peak very often, even locals. Almost no sign of unintelligent life. And I get to look down at the siq canyon from 250 feet on an overhang. Get the vertigo. Getting old? Maybe.

I ate this place up. Come down that siq today at 6.30 am again, no-one around, just rose walls rising around me. I’m listening, trying to picture the sound of hooves and chariot wheels 2000 years ago. I tell myself, I’ll never forget this feeling, this ancient gorge, quiet and empty. But I probably will. That’s why I write this shit down, that’s why I photograph so much. I never remember. Got a fuzzy ocean memory, blurry things bob to the surface now and then, and sink into the murky depths again. I slip messages in bottles and hope they hit the right beach. I keep old deodorants so I can experience the olfactory stimulus, maybe stir up something from the depths years from now. With naught but a sniff..

Before Even London Was Londinium

II- Petra

my lips are dry and burning, I was stroked by that sun today, I’m hurtin all over. Back. Left knee dodgy again. I think I’m locked into my room, Mohammed had to take the key from me under the door this morning to bring breakfast in. hope there’s no fires or earthquakes. I’m like a cranky baby right now. I must just be tired. Everything was pissing me off. Dinner was 11 jd’s, they said it’d be 8. Batteris, 4 dinars, after the first set didn’t work. Every kid saying, Hello, and then, One Dinar! They said there was music at the Cave Bar at 7- go back. Nope, 9 o’clock. I’m too damn tired to wait. This isn’t a goddamn travel guide, it’s my brain on paper. So. Petra blew my mind. I mean, it blew my mind. Palaces carved into canyon rock. Pink canyon rock. Deep gorges and high peaks. A whole little city carved by hand into rose-coloured stone. And I’d be a kid on a playground anyway, climbing in and out of these gorges, but then to walk up rock-hewn steps carved by Nabateans before little tiny baby Jesus burped up, and ascend to an altar surrounded by a spinning vista of peaks and valleys, an altar to the gods, a stone bench for the onlookers, the believers, and some high priest would slit a mewling lamb’s throat, and the bubbling blood would flow hot and fast like water into this basin here, and out through that pipe there and surely these heathens would dance and wail and chant, I had my arms up touching the clouds, thinking what I should sacrifice, here at this altar, holy even before London was Londinium.
Up and down, I went, up and down, drinking in views like milk, sunshine dripping down my chin, greedy little smile all over my face, hobbling down steps by the end of the day because my mountain-running knee says Enough is enough. What tools does a man use to cut a 90-foot column out of a sandstone cliff? Or an entire banquet room with straight, high ceilings and smooth walls? I left my fucking jaw in Petra. I don’t even feel I need to go to Macchu Picchu now. It was like that.
I’m glad I remembered how good this day was. It was just l.o.n.g. Hit the canyon trail at 6.30am and didn’t look back. Limped back up that same trail many climbs and canyons later, at 6.30pm. And dinner was good. A vegetarian’s nightmare. I had mansafe- Jordanian classic. Chuckled to myself, mawing tender lamb straight off a white leg bone, Mansafe maybe, but Lamb not so safe. I’m such an idiot. Humous and babaganoush to boot. Eating like a wolf. Rip-offs be damned, cheats be damned, my breaking knee be damned. I’m on top of the world looking down down on creation. Hope I can walk tomorrow.

Welcome. Welcome!

JORDAN
I- Aqaba to Petra


It’s some Muslim holy day here. No-one seems to be able to explain which one. I’m full of chicken kebab, bbq’ed and scrumptious. Long day in bus seats, but I made it here in a day , so I’m satisfied. Tel Aviv to Eilat was five hours of trying to build on the 3 hours of drunk sleep I had, between Israeli girls playing eyes, vacationers headed to surf city for some sin. Nothing but lip-gloss and chest-chuckling, these Israeli chicks, and loud as chickens. Thanks God again for my earplugs. Eilat’s stinkin hot at 2pm, so I forget looking for a bus to the border, and hop in a cab.
The border’s a breeze, over and out. Share another cab with some awkward Americans. The cab-driver tries to lie to me while we’re driving to Aqaba, Red Sea port city, tells me it’s a holiday, no buses to Petra, I should let him drive me there for 25 Dinars. –Give me your card, but drop me at the city centre. I’ll call you if I need you, I tell him. Full of shit for sure.
Big-backpack man, turning this way and that in the dusty quiet streets of central Aqaba. People are so friendly though. Welcome. Welcome! Welcome, says the butcher as he smiles and holds a guttering chicken down by the throat. Welcome! yells the pint-size little man from his daddy’s sweet shop. Everybody saying welcome, it’s hard not to feel.. welcome. Here in Jordan. A kind man walks up the street with me, shows me where the bus depot is. And there’s the Petra minibus, full and just about to leave. Good timing. Rickety little thing. Give the driver the dinars, only white guy, people glance, curious. I wedge into a seat and we’re trundling.
Outskirts of Aqaba look strangely like Leh- dust brown cliffs and crags rising into the screaming blue sky. 12000 feet lower and 40 degrees hotter though, so it is. Powerlines across the scrubby desert, random camels and Bedouin lean-tos with their pick-ups parked outside, (what lives those people must lead; wanderers). Seems to be a black plastic bag stuck to every desert shrub out there. Hard to believe they’re still handing these things out in the super-markets back home.
The three curious Jordanians behind me finally pipe up after half an hour. One wants to know how much is my camera, can he buy it. Another wants me to take a photo of the red sandstone bluffs in the distance, they are important in Jordan. It’s hard to understand their English. I’m surprised when a woman in a head-covering hijab and black robe to the ground translates what they are saying to me in English that’s a little clearer. As we climb and climb through the desert, the land finally falls away in the west, miles of deep gorges and sandstone islands in the air, like a Grand Canyon near the Red Sea. It’s breath-taking. The woman opens her curtain so I can see better and points out the canyon where Petra is hidden as we come closer.
A town begins to engulf our speedy little highway on either side. Wadi Musa. Again like Leh, built into the sweeping hillside above the sea of canyons that echo into the distance. This is where I sleep tonight.

Jamal in the pick-up says he’s got a room, I hop in. Jamal’s wrong, there’s no room- things are busy. He feels bad for taking me so far up the hill away from town, though, so he drives me around to three different hotels until I find a room. Private bathroom, two beds, a TV that doesn’t seem to work and a gob-smacking view of the sun sinking into the myriad of gorges in the distance beyond the town. I’ll take it.
Walk down around the town centre, lots of smiles and Welcomes. And nobody really trying to sell me anything. Feels like Pleasantville, Arab-style. Things aren’t even so different here. Kids in jeans hanging out on the corners, maybe smoking nargileh, men in the pool hall, families at outside table for kebabs. Allah-u-akbar riding the breeze and some men chatting in Arab head-dress. Not too many women out, and their heads are covered if they are.
The man in the grocery store smiles when I tell him I’m traveling alone so I can hear myself think. And here I am now, listening.

Tel Aviv

The beach beside the military base in Bat Yam, where Katya grew up, is nearly deserted- it’s a little cold for most Israelis, I guess. We ate excellent seafood. I listened to Russian. The kid at the next table was talking longing loveytalk with his girlfriend. He must’ve been about 19, 20. Sunglasses on his head like a camp counselor. They finished and got up to leave, and he casually slings a Kalashnikov over his shoulder. Half of me is thinking, That’s a realistic looking water pistol!! The other half knows damn well it’s real as all hell. Katya and I gawk as this youth saunters away in his shorts, arm in arm with his girlfriend and his gun. I keep thinking how early American settlers probably had kids like this strolling around with firearms cause their new laws said they could, don’t want no injuns or no English strutting around like they own the place. Look where that got Americans. Katya’s aunt says they’re soldiers on leave, they have a special license to keep their gun with them, uniform or not. This way, if an Arab madman appears to gun down a bunch of students someone can take him out. Hard to argue with that- I don’t know what living in that kind of fear is like. But I sure don’t feel safe seeing a spotty kid that looks like he should be measuring children outside rollercoasters strolling around with a semi-automatic. That doesn’t feel like security. That feels like desperation. That feels a breath away from anarchy.
Sitting in the breeze in these quiet suburbs, normal sounds, construction, traffic, everyday life. But I’m in the middle of a tiny country that’s barely hanging on. It’s incredibly strange.
I guess the thing to do is just buy stuff.

* * *

so, Tel Aviv. The modern city. No cultural tour would is complete without a fuck-off vodka night at the Russian clubs. Throwing back sickly sweet vodka-redbulls at home before 11. We meet childhood buddy Igor on the corner and cab it downtown. Ksusha knows people, so we’re into the Rio for free. DJ’s blaring it, wannabe pornstars with white lace and angel wings gyrating slowly onstage. Mullet blue-eyed Russians with hazing vodka eyes gape as the little angels strip down to G-strings and fake titties, the place is filling up. Igor buying round after round, how to keep up, but it feels good. The club experience is to blast your mind with so much alcohol and screamingly loud music that self-conscious little whispers can’t be heard, and the Id can take over, grinding your hips, movin your lips in shouts that no-one hears, turning you into an animal machine in a smoky mating season, tuned into species propagation mode, all systems go go GO! Banging techno beats and sweating mess of bodies, rounds come and go down the hatch, you don’t even remember the cab ride between clubs, you don’t even remember where the shekels went. This is the unforgiving and not-so-blind mating ritual, biceps and tight shirts, tiny skirts and glossy labia-looking lipstick, sex pounds the blood like bass beats, all this and more, Friday night whores, we’re all made the same in the end, the same stuff, but it comes out in different ways. 5am, we’re home, don’t know how. Hitched a ride in some suped-up hotshot Honda blaring Eminem, seatbelts on, that’s for sure. Ears ringing, it’ll be the only reminder in the morning. Ringing ears and aching head. Answer the call next weekend again. Shaking tail-feathers. Squawk. SQUAAAAWK..

A Thousand Steps

MYSORE


feelin like it might be time to leave India for a spell; getting in altercations in fruit markets, temples looking the same, the cows are turning yellow. Gotta head to London for a new visa anyway- rain and cloud and real beer and real wine and family.
“He grabbed my ass!!” yelled Katya, pointing. Little guy in a plaid lungi, glanced over his shoulder as I started after him and began to run, around stacks of bananas and chikus, men tottering loads on their heads in the mid-day market. He slips through the bike barrier but I catch him by the wagon outside the market- “You learn some respect, man!! What you do if I grab your wife?!” I’m jabbin him with my finger, crazy beardo tourist towering over him, he’s yelling back in something that’s not English or Hindi, I keep jabbin, “You like I grab YOUR wife?! Huh?!” Jab jab. “You learn some RESPECT!!” I slap the back of my hand into my palm violently- I’m not quite sure what this is supposed to mean, but the little guy looks sufficiently scared and bewildered, so I pick my way back through the wide eyes and veg stalls, back to buyin’ peas. Dig for the fresh ones. Couple minutes later the little guy walks by again, crates on head. I give him the mad-eye stare-down as he passes. Couple moments later he’s at my side again, jammering away. “What’s he sayin, what’s he sayin” I’m asking the pea walla; he doesn’t know. Nothing is between just two people in the street in India though- pretty soon we got an audience, one of them’s good with English, "What’s he sayin?!" English-speaker says, “What happen what happen?” “He grab my wife bum!” I grab a chunk of my ass at point to the little guy. This gets translated; animated jammering from the little guy. “He say no no, not him. Him not like this. Other man. Coolie. Make 2, 3 rupees per hour. They like this!” I point, and yell across the stall, “Was this the guy!” “YES!” she yells back. “This is him! He grab her!” Jammering, jammering. “No no, not him, he say!” I look in the little guy’s eyes- sincere, puppy-dog almost. Maybe he’s true- I can’t forgive him right here though- what if he did it? I mean, he did start to run. I don’t know, what the fuck; I shrug. “Challo”, I say. Let’s go. We’ve got almost 3 kilograms of peas now anyway.

Stepping round husks and shells, bangle shop wallas yelling, veg vendors yelling, their customers yelling back; for the sixth time since I entered the market someone grabs me and demands, Which country you are from? I could say, Pakistan- then they laugh and think I’m a new friend making a joke. I could say somewhere they’ve never heard of- Estonia; then they repeat it to themselves a few times, start to ask me all about Stoneyaar, curious. I could be honest- Canada; then it’s, Which part? French or English? Trrronto? Wancuva? It is the perfect impossible question for these guys; Which country? And if that doesn’t work- Your name, friend? Answer, and you’re into a conversation, and then you’re buying something you don’t want for a price you don’t like. Don’t answer, and you feel rude for ignoring a simple question, so innocently asked, specially if it’s a kid, specially when they repeat the question five times. There is no solution- my reaction changes according to my mood.

We took the bus to the top of Chamungi hill this morning; One of the eight holy hills of Southern India, proclaims the sign. A thousand steps to the citadel overlooking Mysore- but the bus is only six rupees. No brainer. We get off and it’s a circus of souvenir stands, package tour buses, snacky shops and pilgrims lined up all around the temple at the centre of it all- the eye of the storm. We walk to the wall at the hilltop’s edge to admire the view and escape this unexpected mayhem, but we’re greeted with a gentle slope of plastic dumpings and human waste down the mountainside- I’m suddenly glad we didn’t climb a thousand steps for this.

I sit on a wall above a thinner patch of waste. I think about the 24-hour train ride I have ahead of me tomorrow, and then a long flight to a whole different world- a quieter world, an ordered world, cold rain and grey skies. I get that creeping feeling in my scalp, that chapter-ending feeling, that almost-time-to-flip-the-record feeling that’s part sad, part pensive- that turn to look back at the mountain you’ve descended before you continue the hike into the valley. I guess this is India, Part One. Flip the record.
I jumped off the wall to start down a thousand steps. Two young women were struggling up the steps, hunched and bending to mark every single last step with red and yellow turmeric powder. I stepped around them and started down.

Coffee and Cardamom

Outside Madikeri-

Werner is the major player here, the guy that runs the joint, ex-late hippie, 1980 hippie, came to Goa/Bombay first time back then, dropped acid, chilled in opium dens where there’s one large long pipe for four users on bamboo mats, sharing the smoke with little wooden headrests, but no smoke no stay, This is not a flophouse, and it’s bad shit says Werner, never again, and then the power snaps back on again in his living room and his eyes are red, moustache twitching, he looks ten years older in the electric light, he’s telling us in his Germano accent about these electric times on LSD, the planning and preparation, agreeing on the music and the mood beforehand, valium at the ready in case of a bad trip, how he had such a bad trip one time he took all his valium to get off it- lucky he had only three left, and the smoke is being passed around, rolled from his giant Medusa-head looking growth and he’s telling us how it’s lonely living alone but it’s hard to find someone who’d adapt to this plantation lifestyle, out here on the retreat amongst the crickets and the tea leaves and coffee leaves and cardamom and giant tadpoles and little poisonous green snakes that coil up in balls when something’s coming and bite something if it steps on it so you gotta carry a torch at night on the paths to see your way, don’t step on those little guys, no way.

Crickets or cicadas, rice paddies and tea plantations, stillness and peace- it’s a different kind of India miles out here, my body is still vibrating from twenty hours of bumpy, spine-busting bus-riding, my neck is practically in traction. We got to Madikeri, but didn’t last long there- dust and noise and scummy hotels and “rooftop garden restaurants” which are dining room attics attached to open urinals. We made a few calls and came out to the Silver Mist Retreat, quaint cabins overlooking rice paddies frequented by elderly British couples. Whatever. K’s not well enough to go trekking for three days like we planned, and the Tibetan village we wanted to see now requires a permit, and we definitely weren’t staying in Madikeri. It’s beautiful serenity here- how I imagined Kerala, actually. Too bad I was so starving and all they had left to eat was toast. And cheese though. Smiley.
Our overnight bus stopped in Hubli for the half-hour break. I clambered down from my sleeper to look for a pisser and a friendly Indian man, late thirties, skinny, went to temple today, asked me, What country?.. We started talking, I was in a friendly mood and I knew he wasn’t trying to sell me anything, he was just on my bus. We found a piss alley, then he offered to buy me a beer from the standing bar. He took a tiny bottle of whiskey with some water and threw back the whole thing in one shot. Then we went around the corner to scrounge out some food. He told me how he worked in mining, managerial business side, traveled lots, and told me that it was an ancient volcano that gave Hampi its crazy Flintstone rock formations. He bought me some gobi and rice too, refused to take any money and threw back another of those tiny whiskeys. Now his eyes were red, and I can see why he likes to travel for his job. I tell him how all the Indians I’ve met in the past while have been trying to sell me something and it’s so wonderful to experience this amazing hospitality again, and he starts to go on about humanity and how it’s the only thing that matters, and he’s not really making sense any more, but who cares. I’m smiling. This is why I like Indian people. I remember again.

Home Away From Home (away from home)

Trapped in Hampi, more Hebrew than Hindi here, and I’ve never slept so much in my life as these last two days. We got the food poisoning again, K. worse than me. She was in high fever last night with painful leg cramps. We’re supposed to be in Madikeri by now, but we had to re-schedule. It’ll be a relief to get to London in a week- I’m tired of the backpacking trail, Hampi made me tired. I’ve discovered that backpacking in a place like India is a strange phenomenon. People come here to backpack presumably because they want to experience a different culture, try new things- yet the main backpacking centres are constructed to be a cheaper version of home. Here in Hampi, you walk down the guesthouse strip and you’ll see only white people, some dressed in the baggy riding pants and colourful loose scarves and dredlocked hair which is considered “Indian” by these travelers, but I’ve been here six months and have never seen an Indian dressed like that. Anywhere. Some of these neo-hippies will even accuse you of not having been here very long- “I can tell by your dress”, which makes me want to flick turmeric in their eyes. These same backpackers eat in the guesthouse restaurants where the first half of the menu is Israeli salads and humus & pita; then pizza and pastas; then burgers and fries; and the back page might have some daal and rice options, but I never see these ordered. Then in the evenings. these same culture-seekers watch Hollywood blockbusters- walk down the strip and every guesthouse is showing its own movie, dredlocked heads gathered round the glowing light. If they opt not to watch Pulp Fiction, they’ll most likely smoke hashish and compare notes with fellow countrymen on the bargain they got on their Om t-shirt, while Pink Floyd tunes blare from their shoddy i-pod speakers. Meanwhile, in modest rooms on the ground floor, Indian families try to sleep, another day of serving the argumentative foreigners at an end.
You will see Indians when you walk around here, but they are all trying to sell you something- the closest most of these backpackers get to a relationship with an Indian national is arguing with a rickshaw driver over a ride to Hospet, or ordering another side of fries in the guesthouse restaurant. This is the strange world of Indian backpacking; get high, dress hippy, fuck a German or a Texan, (you know, something exotic)-meet a monkey, take lots of digital photos and go home and tell everyone about the wonderful mysticism of India. It’s bullshit.
I am so glad I spent my first few months here meeting only Indians. In the first cities we visited, we’d scream, White person!! as if we’d seen a tiger when we spotted a goora. We made many friends from Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, etc. We experienced incredible Indian hospitality first-hand, learnt what they thought about their country, its pros and cons, first-hand. So it was a shock to hit the tourist trail and to suddenly have to be wary of the locals we met in the street- we had experienced such kindness everywhere else, even from complete strangers. I miss this. I miss Ladakh, where I was alone outside the tourist season and couldn’t help but make local friends. I miss striking up a conversation with a local without wondering if he has a guesthouse room he wants to sell me for the night. And sure, it’s been nice to watch a movie and eat a pizza and hear some Pearl Jam again, but I’m ready to get back to India. I’m ready to get the hell out of Hampi.

The Hump to Hampi

It’s a post-sunset slow river in a Flintstone movie set from the 16th Century, huge tan boulders impossibly stacked, huge tan temples dirty, blending into the landscape. It’s Hampi. The last boat to our side of the river just came in, straggling tourists climbing up the last hill for the day. It’s quieter over here, away from the bazaar and the major temples. Something about a slow river makes everything around it a little slower, a little lazier. People take their cues from their surroundings.
We just arrived here after an odyssey. It shoulda been: one-hour bus, Gokarna to Kumta; wait 3 hours. Then 8-hour bus overnight, Kumta to Hospet. Get in at 8am and rickshaw it to Hampi. Instead, it went like this..
We scramble for the one-hour bus to Kumta; leaving an hour earlier than they told us yesterday. Catch it barely, ride to Kumta, then have four and a half hours to kill in the dirty little town. We find a dingy little backroom bar, and start in on the Kingfishers, the four of us, me and the three girls (Nooshin and Rebekah). Ceiling fans stirring the thick air, all the men in shock to see three women in their watering hole. We drink and drink and laugh and laugh till they boot us out at 10:30, then we wander down to whosever restaurant is open to eat something and drink some more. Quarter to 12 we decide we better head back to the bus stand, to be safe. There they tell us the bus won’t come until 12:30. So we settle in. 90% men, gawking at the three white girls who are too liquored to take it quietly and throw out a few good, Can I help yous??- a crazy beggar woman befriending Rebekah, a huge and injured German shepherd befriending Nooshin; I keep thinking how it’d be a lark to get my guitar out, but I don’t really want that much attention. Another big joint burns down. Stale urine on warm breezes, all eyes on us- I fucking hate bus stands. 12:30 comes; so does a bus- it’s not ours. Then another. And another. And still another. Katya’s pleading with the office man, Where is it?!One o’clock comes. And then finally so does our bus. We’d hoped for front seats, but we’re stuck in the middle again. Katya and I try to get comfortable on a 3-seater, but the bumps make your teeth chatter, and the driver takes the turns like he’s experimenting with bus wheelies. I’m getting the spins; too much drink, too much swerving. I’m so tired, and my eyes are closing slow like curtains, but backstage it’s all black spinning until I’m reeled awake again. Try to breathe. Eyes closing. Spinning. I fight like this for almost an hour. Then I get the telltale shot of hot saliva in the back of my mouth, and I slide the window open.. I’m really gonna join em- all those Indian school-buses I’ve seen with the long brown streaks beneath every window; I’ve always wondered what it’s like. I jut my head out into the rushing cold air as far as I can, watching for oncoming trucks. And then up comes fried gopti and rice and beer, spattering the speeding asphalt, the window beside me- I don’t want to think what the passenger behind me is seeing. I clench my teeth, and heave again. And again. Window splattered, my mark left on the night highway somewhere. I fall back into my seat and slide the window shut. Katya is snoring, she slept through the whole thing. I feel much better.
Sometime later we arrive at a stop and most of the bus disembarks- all four of us claim three-seaters for ourselves. By god, we are going to get sleep on an Indian bus! We start off again, but I soon realize that the driver is keeping his window wide open to stay awake, and the air is absolutely frigid. I’m still in my shorts and t-shirt from the beach, trying to fit every inch of me under a thin blanket, huddled down on the seats. But drafts find their way into every space between blanket and body. I can’t get to my pack till we stop again, so I steel myself and think warm thoughts, shivering for an hour.
Finally we stop, and I get the cosies on. We start off again and I manage to drift in and out for half an hour, but then the sun’s coming up, the same fuzzy peach I saw dip below the waves from a motorboat twelve hours ago on my way out of paradise. We must be getting close, so I just sit up and wait.
Pretty soon we pull into a bus stand- Is this Hospet? Hospet? Bustle, confusion- the bus clears. This must be it. But the conductor is saying something to Nooshin about switching buses… What?! This is not Hospet. Then someone else says there’s a traffic jam,
no-one’s going anywhere. But we can walk to the train station and reach Hospet from there. So we march.
Train tickets are cheap, and the wait’s only fifty minutes. We settle on a bench, all eyes on us, all beggars on us, dried puke only on me. After fifteen minutes people start clambering down off the platform and crossing the tracks to stand on the other side- there’s no other platform though. They tell us it’s where we have to stand for the Hospet train. So we struggle with our luggage down to the tracks, stepping over sun-baked human shit and other delicacies to bake ourselves in the morning sun, standing on the tracks for the train.
It finally comes. We settle in for half an hour and then grab a rickshaw into Hampi from Hospet, bedraggled and exhausted. But maybe it was all worth it.

Man-cubs, Millipedes

In the station a dirty monkey hunches in the rafters, enjoying bath-time and lunch-time at the same time- the old pick n’ chew. Occasionally throwing a careless glance down to his crazy relatives, the man-cubs and washer-women, the rainbow sari splashes and suitcaseheads, milling like millipedes, busy like ants. Greasy rats crawl through wet corners, and kids-at-work in the station smile bright white through dusty faces, asking for ice cream. Families stacked on suitcase stacks in package circles, sharing nuts and sweets, parked on the dirty floor; babies snore on shoulders as trains roll through on other platforms. Calm before the storm. Hindi, English, hindi, English, the constant loudspeaker updates are indiscernible in any language, but they’re going for quantity, not quality- and then the chai seller’s voice cuts through them all, high and nasal- Chaaii-ii-i!- as he pushes the steel cart between squatting families and forlorn holy men. Finally, the gazelles at the watering hole hear the warning cry, whistle shivers down the track, and entire family clans are on their feet in seconds; lanky porters are already pushing through, huge suitcases on their heads; backpackers are turning this way and that, Is this the right train, is this the right train?! And then a sudden gloom swallows the station as the snake slides in, and jostling groups try to predict where their door will stop. Finally, the whole apparatus sighs and jolts to a halt, and the disembarking passengers start to push from the inside out- they get about forty seconds grace to squeeze themselves out of the coach doors, then it’s toothpaste back into the tube- the mass of sweaty shirts and hairy arms grappling, trying to become liquid as it surges itself up a steel step and through a tiny door. Just put your head down and PUSH! No women first, children follow bread crumbs through the forest of legs, just PUSH, and you pop through the entrance, bag and all, until you’re carried down the human river to your seat. And the monkey in the rafters glances up when the steel snake trundles off, crunches down another bedbug snack.