Images of The Middle East

Images in my mind, as they occurred to me.

We had fabulous fruits, fresh from the trees, every day. The figs and apricots and dates are a delightful treat.



Law-abiding drivers. On Egypt's main highways, we went through a radar trap every 20 miles. In Jordan, it was every 5 miles. No kidding. Some people may drive fast, but it is risky and expensive. And there are speed bumps everywhere, including in the middle of 4-lane divided highways, which guarantees that traffic repeatedly experiences abrupt slowdowns.

It seems as if everybody smokes. It's like the American South in the 1970s.

Developing education, and a changing society. These lands are very rural, and agriculture is very demanding. Many children work the family's land. But there are lots of satellite dishes, and TV and the internet and cell phones are changing everything, much as they do throughout the world. Parents who work the same land and live in the same house where their great-great-grandparents lived suddenly discover, within a single generation, that their kids want to sit at home and stare at screens. Many parents are having much difficulty adjusting to new attitudes toward work.

Lack of stature of women. Like many places we visit, women are very much second-class people here. Religion forces them to remain subservient, out of sight, and away from any visible role – yet they still have all the responsibility for running the family, and many would be vastly more capable than men we met. Muslim women remain fully covered, even in the heat of the summer.

Many women still wear the Niqab, with the entire body covered, and only a small slit open at the eyes for vision. In Egypt and Jordan, virtually every woman wore at least a Hijab, covering the head and hair. Teen girls on school field trips to major sites were scolded quickly when they tried to talk to foreigners of either gender. Muslim men must compete vigorously for jobs in the resort hotels, where women from around the world wander around in tiny swimming suits.

The importance of religion. Here, as in many places, religion dominates the culture and life. Turkey seems more secular, but it is still 99% Muslim. It defines who people are, and almost every aspect of their lives. These countries fight very vicious and bitter wars about religion, and they do it repeatedly. More important, in Egypt and Jordan, it keeps women from making major contributions to society.

The ever-present concerns about security. Every airport we flew into in Egypt had taxiways that simply disappeared into the ground. We had no idea how many military aircraft were in those underground bunkers, but in aggregate, it was likely most of the Air Force.

There is a very uneasy peace with Israel, and these countries have fought many wars.  Armed security guards are everywhere.

In the U.S. people want security, but they would have a fit about all these guys walking around with machine guns. The U.S. is like a wide-open kindergarten compared to these countries.

Business is booming, throughout this region. Major corporations from the U.S., Asia, and Europe are everywhere in Cairo and Amman. Construction cranes sprout like spring flowers. There are banks from around the globe, including local Islamic banks. In the restaurants in large hotels one can hear two dozen languages in a half hour.

A very casual relationship with time. It is like “island time” in the Caribbean. We had hotel wake-up calls that came 45 minutes after the time requested. Events occur when people happen to show up.

The importance of water. There is water, even in the desert, but it is scarce. Agriculture, growing cities, and demanding tourists use a lot. As in the American West, I remain concerned that great disputes in future years may erupt over access to water.

Great dependency on tourism. Both Egypt and Jordan are heavily dependent on tourists. The last couple of years have been very hard. Now tourists are traveling again, especially from Asia (hordes of Chinese are new here, as they already seem to be everywhere), both Eastern and Western Europe, and even South America, especially from Brazil and Argentina, as those economies boom. There are a few Americans, but not like before.

The working poor. There is poverty here, but it is not like many places. Everybody seems to be working. They may earn low wages, but we do not see lots of people doing nothing. And there’s no sense of entitlement. Everybody finds their own way to make a contribution, and they work at it.

History. Locals take things for granted – they've seen these things from birth. But we are astounded at the temples, monuments, tombs, statues, and everything else, from thousands of years ago, that are everywhere we go.

Much more important, most of that history has been written down, and is available to us thousands of years later. How different that is from the Americas!

New experiences, like the Dead Sea salt and mud.

And the most fabulous boat trip down the Nile.




Very good food. Local diets contain a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. It is very easy to eat completely healthy foods, all the time. Of course, western fast food restaurants appear everywhere now, and locals find them as compelling as do westerners.

Good guides. There is a spectrum of guides, as elsewhere, but the best are very special. Our guide in Cairo will lecture at American universities this summer, and he is surely one of the most capable guides we have met anywhere in the world. The guides are also worldly: most have traveled to other countries, and many speak several languages.



Turkey is booming. We saw many six-figure cars, and hundreds one price lever lower. As elsewhere, many familiar manufacturers, but new models: a Toyota Avensis, for example, with flowers and streamers, was a lovely limousine for a bride.

From our hotel window, every morning there was a large fleet (one hundred or more) of ships waiting to pass through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea.



Everybody is working at something. Kids were carrying full backpacks on Saturday. Our guide estimated the literacy rate at 99%. Even if she is off by a lot, that’s much higher than in the U.S.