Privileged Witness: Journeys of Rediscovery

PRIVILEGED WITNESS:

JOURNEYS

of

REDISCOVERY

JULIE HILL

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© 2014 Julie Hill. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse     06/16/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-1685-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-1684-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910205

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

I. ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

The Jewels of Andalusia (Spain, 2009)

The Golden Ring (Russia, 2003)

Rainbows Across the Landscape (Argentina, 2010)

At the Foot of the Heavens (Peru, 2009)

The Road to Damascus (Syria, 2008)

Through Syria’s Silk Road (Syria, 2008)

In the Footsteps of Lawrence (Jordan, 2008)

A Pact with History (Vietnam, 2002, 2006, 2010)

II. RITUALS AND FESTIVALS

The Show of a Lifetime (Papua New Guinea, 2012)

Among the Wig Men (Papua New Guinea, 2012)

Cruising the Karawari (Papua New Guinea, 2012)

Rites of Spring (Japan, 2004)

Splendor in the Streets (India, 2006)

Life and Death along the Ganges (India, 2013)

The Ultimate Lonely Place (Bhutan, 2003)

Blessed in Luang Prabang (Laos, 2010)

The Land of Temples (Myanmar, 2001, 2012)

Into Forbidden Cities (Myanmar, 2012)

III. HOMAGE TO AFRICA

Over and Down the Dunes (Namibia, 2009)

Stepping into Sacred Space (Mali, 2010)

Busy Port, Slow River (Mali, 2010)

The Real Timbuktu (Mali, 2010)

Rich Rewards in a Poor Country (Ethiopia, 2012)

The Remote Omo River Valley (Ethiopia, 2012)

Wild Sage and Starlight (Botswana, 2013)

An Encounter with Noah’s Ark (Tanzania, 2010)

A Return to Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe, 2001, 2013)

The Author

The Editor

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At each stage of my journeys from dream to experience, I was well provisioned by friends generous with advice and information.

This collection of 27 essays would not have come to fruition if it were not for Jose Dalisay whose encouragement as mentor and as editor made it possible. I enjoyed the rare luxury of an editor who showed exceptional insight and understanding in training a searchlight on my prose.

I am also deeply grateful to Phil Steffney, John Hjelmstad, Pat Garcia, Merritt Kimball, Michael Roy, Liliane Novak, Louise Diracles, and other friends who freely shared their pictures, their memories, and their reflections on what we all saw and went through, inspiring me to look at the world more closely.

My special thanks go to Craig Smith for the cover photograph, whose haunting beauty invites us to pause and contemplate the life around us.

PROLOGUE

Like any seafaring Greek, I have a restless love for adventure.

Although I have put roots down for a dozen years now in the idyllic Southern California community of Rancho Santa Fe, travel is a kind of lovemaking for me: roaming, reveling, and then returning to write about my journeys like Ulysses.

For me traveling is first the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands: getting away from the house, away from life’s routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home. The world exists in my eyes; I can make it beautiful or ugly. I can make it big or small; I can praise exotic cuisine or dislike it, all depending on my attitude. A meal could be very simple; it could be in one part rice with vegetables; the rest is love of family, of food, and of companionship.

My thoughts often wander back to Alexandria in Egypt where I lived in my childhood. In a flash my mind’s eye sees wind-washed white beaches, lovely villas, glittering cafes on the seafront, shops filling and emptying, moneychangers ringing silver in their counters. Then memory shifts to the thousand dust-tormented streets, the flies, and the beggars with their bowls. For a moment, I could hear above the souk street noises, my father’s bargaining for another carpet to be added to our collection. Bargaining became a skill honed in my childhood more than half a century ago.

Five races, five languages, a dozen creeds—what an opportunity to learn languages! Forty percent of Alexandria’s inhabitants were foreigners; it was a melting pot of a city where in reality none of us belonged. For many, it was a charmed life, for as long as King Farouk, a friend of the British, reigned; we were all part of one of the most privileged communities in the world. It was a period of great prosperity, a life of pleasure.

But a new era was emerging for the country. Egyptians resented any suggestion of colonial influence and foreign domination. Egypt is for the Egyptians soon became the slogan of the streets. There was a steady progression of events impacting foreigners. Nasser came to power, his speeches brimming with venom. He vowed to rid Egypt of all outsiders, to eliminate the Jewish state, and to stamp out the last vestiges of colonialism and the monarchy. An exodus of foreigners began in earnest, and any sense of security became illusory; like thousands of others, we fled. Escorted to the port, we were bound for Greece, my parents’ ancestral land, with only a suitcase in hand; even my father’s gold watch was confiscated. The splendor of colonial life came to an end, and we were paying the price.

While my parents made their home in Halandri, an Athens neighborhood, I departed for America, for graduate school in Minneapolis. For someone who had never seen snow and had only experienced the mild Mediterranean climate, I landed in Minnesota—the Siberia (with central heating) of the United States. English was my fifth language and graduate studies were not easy. I felt ostracized by my classmates; I was different, I had never seen television, I had never heard of someone called Elvis Presley; those memories haunt me to this day.

At the university I met Arthur, an Australian foreign student, and the magical ease of a friendship developed, then love blossomed. From an account of my life in Alexandria, our conversations moved on to travel, to all those cites we planned to visit on our return to his homeland. We talked of the gender of cities: Paris was female, London male, Rome hermaphrodite, and we laughed as we plotted an extensive 100-day trip, on a budget of $20 a day. We thought it would be the only tour of our lifetime. We were married while still in graduate school, with 14 people at our wedding. No one thought our marriage would last, but they were all wrong; it was a golden marriage of 43 years, over which a new world opened for me, a world of travel, of books, of music.

Work opportunities took us to faraway places with names that began to enter the international consciousness only decades later: Thailand, the Philippines, Western Samoa, and Afghanistan. Globalization became a reality in our life before it became a household word. But it was always more than work; what often began as a job turned into love, into a deep and abiding affinity with our new home and its people.

I look back with nostalgia at those assignments. I was bowled over by the gentle Buddhist people of Thailand and by the hardworking but smiling Filipinos whose rituals and celebrations fascinated me; Afghanistan was astonishingly rich in traditions, in ancient pieties and dramatic landscapes, shimmering with the still-intact Buddha sculptures in Bamyan. My two previous books recounted our expatriate life in those remarkable four decades—so many sparkling moments. Our network of friends crossed countries and cultures linked more tightly than ever with e-mail.

Sometimes one’s most challenging journeys take place at home. My greatest source of joy and strength, Arthur, fell mortally ill, and I had to return to the workplace to provide for both of us. Here my technical training and my previous global exposure came through; I joined the corporate world of AT&T, covered the Asian continent as a marketing telecommunications executive, and became an advocate of Asian peoples and their cultures.

I did not forget Alexandria, where I returned as a business executive and as an invited friend. I was hosted by Madame Anwar Sadat. I returned link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city where I grew up. I roamed the city streets and looked at its vanishing landmarks. Today a magnificent edifice—resurrecting the spirit of the Ancient Library of Alexandria while using 21st-century tools —stands overlooking the Mediterranean. In contemporary Egypt and outside government jurisdiction, it is a space of freedom where every point of view is discussed. I belong to the international friends of the Bibliotheca of Alexandria, and am its staunch supporter. I am grateful to the education I received in that country.

My peripatetic life did not end at retirement, even though I have settled down today in Rancho Santa Fe, where I am involved in my local community, mentoring graduate students of the University of California in San Diego, and by serving on non-profit boards such as the Scripps Cancer Center. I have adjusted to new challenges and continue to travel to remote places more confidently than ever before.

Most of my travels are slightly out of the ordinary, a privileged opportunity to view the spectacular panorama of remote areas of the globe. I am certainly not the first person to have discovered these places, and some of them I may even have visited previously myself, but I like to think that I am seeing them with fresh eyes, especially on behalf of those who cannot or would not. Family, friends, and acquaintances often financially better off than me rarely consider traveling to unfamiliar destinations, usually restricting themselves to the English-speaking world. Even there, they will not venture taking local transport, a bus, the tube or the Metro. More than once, I have heard people exclaim We have it in America—Luxor, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canal— in Las Vegas!

The art of adventure is the art of being bold enough to enjoy it. On a safari I must have spent hours tracking, the footprints of wild animals; for other travelers the hours were too long and boring; after having seen one giraffe the others seemed all the same to them. But for me the tracking process was a fascinating adventure and locating that pride of 13 lions was an unparalleled reward, a golden joy. I could hear the muezzin in the Middle East (so much more inspiring when it is not a recording) calling the faithful to evening devotion. To me, the muezzin’s call—whether in a remote Central Asia bazaar or resounding among the tufa walls and spires of Timbuktu—is like a congregation of mountains praying.

In my travels I have discerned a similarity among people who bear the same universal aspirations: all want their children to lead a better life and have a better future than theirs; they all cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die. We share so much, but still have to work at understanding one another. Breaking the ice can be as easy and as natural as sharing pictures of one’s children. I have no children of my own, but I always carry pictures of the family’s younger generation and a map of the world. How to become friends? By accepting a cup of tea, then a second cup, then a third cup in a non-hygienic glass, I am reminded of the quote: With the first cup you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third you join the family. When I travel to India, I meet kids on the road. What do I ask beyond What is your name? So I have learned the names of the India’s leading cricket players—the better to open a conversation with those boys who loiter on the temple steps.

On my travels, I have been privileged to spend time in the privacy of people’s homes and to learn of their rituals, such as the jewelry handed to the eldest daughter from generation to generation in Mali’s Djennè. An impromptu invitation at a village up in the mountains of the Caucasus brought me to a wedding, sipping vodka and dancing in a circle with other women. Gallery owners in Manila invited me to their home to view their collection, offering one of my favored delicacies, mango juice; in Delhi and Tehran, merchants ushered me into their apartments to view their priceless private collection, offering me cool watermelon and sliced cucumbers.

Every time I was treated by my hosts as a friend, as a confessor, and I have tried to vindicate their trust by bringing their stories to life.

I do not travel to far-off lands to collect experiences for a book. I travel for the sheer joy and the exhilaration of visiting distant places and encountering different cultures. I jot down notes randomly, I take photographs, I send e-mails to friends around the world. I listen to stories from merchants, farmers, migrant workers, and government officials. I am struck by their familiarity with loss and their preoccupation with survival. I am able to observe, to pursue interesting and revealing conversations. My life would be part Marco Polo, part Arabian Nights, part David Livingstone according to where I land.

Each chapter of this book captures a specific moment. Each essay was originally written in a somewhat different form, as a letter to a friend, an e-mail, advice to family or a neighbor about visiting a place of potential interest. These essays are open-eyed first impressions, and in many cases circumstances have overtaken me. The souk of Aleppo was burned to the ground; the glorious minaret of the Great Aleppo mosque was toppled down; Myanmar is a country in transition; Argentina devalued again; Vietnam has seen an enormous leap in prosperity. I grieve for the losses, many of them irreparable, but the best I can do is to revive the memory of these places when they were most alive.

One of the best quotes I have read about travel comes from Paul Theroux, perhaps the best-known travel writer of our time. He wrote in The Last Train to Zona Verde: "These days, keenly aware of wasted time, I hear the clock ticking more insistently. I hate the idea of travel as déjà vu. Show me something new, something different, something changed, something wonderful, something weird!"

Reading extensively before another trip to India, I am absorbed by the Moguls. How many people have visited Barbour’ s tomb in Afghanistan, the first Mogul emperor who is buried in his beloved Kabul? I am fascinated by Akbar the Great (grandfather of Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal) who expanded his empire from Bengal to Afghanistan. He was a ruthless emperor who transformed his chiefdom into a large empire, killed legions of his enemies, and decapitated thousands; but like Tamerlane who built Samarkand, Akbar built an exquisite capital in Fatehpur Sikri, hiring the best artisans not only of his empire but also of neighboring countries.

I visited Fatehpur Sikri with Arthur 53 years ago, but even ages before that it had already been a ghost city. It was the cultural capital of a vanished empire, built in a sandstone mixture of Hindu and Islamic architecture. What fascinates me about Akbar the great Moghul emperor is that he loved to discuss religion and issues of the day although he was completely illiterate. He held court with Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Jains, Zoroastrians, and Buddhists to discuss the merits of their beliefs. Here was an all-powerful emperor and mass executioner who was interested in matters of the spirit. What moved him so? What in his surroundings gave rise to these far from practical musings? Fatehpur Sikri speaks to our deepest dualities and most complex contradictions as human beings, and when I venture forth to travel to places as rich with history and meaning, it is to explore the mysteries within me, which could yet prove boundless.

Julie Hill

Rancho Santa Fe

April 2014

I. ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

The Jewels of Andalusia (Spain, 2009)

A ndalusia—what a melodic name! I have never visited that part of the Iberian Peninsula, and it is time to remedy the omission.

I do not speak Spanish and find it difficult to travel alone outside main cities; I join an escorted tour, a prescribed, rather rigid itinerary; I’ll cover a rough rectangle of Andalusia cornered by Seville, Cordoba, Grenada, and the coastal resort of Marbella. The French Guide Bleu for Andalusia is my favorite, way more culturally rigorous than the English Blue Guide. It rates the area exceptionnel including the Alhambra at Granada, Cordoba’s mosque/cathedral and the cliffs of Ronda.

I started this journey in Portugal, passing through cork-tree plantations before entering Spain and proceeding to Seville through valleys of green farm, olive groves, and ranches capped with circling hills. Churches stand on the piazzas of small villages and towns; the facades are Moorish-inspired. As we visit them I am bewildered by all the ornamentation; I cannot differentiate Baroque from Rococo. At a minimum I can discern a Gothic from a Moorish arch.

Seville is a delight, a city with many charms with its luxurious fragrance of orange blossoms that hang in the air beneath an impossibly blue sky, a jumble of narrow streets, shaded squares and fanciful spires that top abundant churches, a mix of culture, a city where classical Christian and Muslim cultures met and merged. It is a walking city as I wander the picturesque narrow alleys of the Santa Cruz quarter; flowers are tumbling off wrought-iron balconies of whitewashed dwellings; I enjoy a visit to the magnificent 14th-century Royal Alcazar Palace, a masterpiece of Moorish architecture, graceful arches and ceilings with stalactite vaulting resembling a glittering cluster of icicles, a splendid trademark of Islamic architecture. Time to photograph the Giralda built in the 12th century, the most famous monument of the city; it is an ancient minaret that stands next to the cathedral and towers above Seville. It can be seen from miles away, but I am too tired to climb and view from the top the city and the far-off mountain ranges.

La Giralda, the striking Moorish bell tower of Seville’s cathedral (John Warburton-Lee/Danita Delimont.com)

Not far from the Alcazar stands the great cathedral of Seville, the largest Catholic cathedral of Europe (St. Peter, I am reminded, is a basilica, and St. Paul’s an Anglican cathedral), a fine example of Gothic architecture built in the 15th century; it is bewildering to cover its 20 chapels. Like St. Paul’s and many European cathedrals, there is so much history encrusted in its walls. Here in a majestic tomb lies Christopher Columbus; how exceptional is to be alone in chapels whose niches are devoted to masterpieces of Zurbaran, Goya, and Murillo. I am glued in front of the royal gilded chapel. I make a rapid calculation of the retablo’s solid gold. At $1,300 an ounce, I calculate than in sheer gold it is worth $750 million, a reminder of the once-powerful Spanish empire when gold from the Aztecs and the Incas and silver from Mexico passed through Seville. Should this magnificence make me to forget the cruelties of the Inquisition?

High up on this list of attractions is the Museum of Modern Art which offers a tranquil oasis of calm and reflection. The setting is a former monastery which enhances the religious aura of the collection. It is considered, after the Prado, the second greatest picture gallery of Spain. The building itself is a masterpiece for its capacity to illustrate the achievements of European art, the Sevillian school of Spanish baroque; many of the Golden-Age Spanish painters are exhibited here.

Seville has a surge of modern buildings. Spanish architects are today of international stature; they have built in the last couple of decades remarkable structures from the railway station to bridges in the form of a ship or a horse. Surprisingly, these modern buildings sit well in a city with a fragile, storied past.

Seville is not an inanimate collection of architectural treasures but a city with a soul—the heartland of flamenco, whose roots go back to the gypsies, the Arabs, and the Jews who came to Andalusia. Flamenco is to Seville what the Mississippi delta is for jazz, my guidebook reminds me. There are numerous peñas or clubs where flamenco is performed. I decide it is time to take a cultural performance in a local peña. I saw it advertised on a wall in the old Santa Cruz quarter; no tour groups are admitted in this particular club, and