More Tidbits

• The Marlboro Man rides big and bold in the lavender-hued Kuwait airport, and the smell of cigarette smoke, likewise, looms large in many a public space, including all of the airports where we whiled our hours, waiting for flights from Kuwait to Oman, Oman to Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi to Bahrain, and Bahrain to Amsterdam.  The systems were efficient, though, and we arrived everywhere with a minimum of confusion and to find our luggage waiting as soon as we wended our way through passport control.

I fell in love–as I was warned in Kuwait that I would–with Oman.  This is not a place of high rises, but of low, white villages and cities tucked amidst craggy, rocky black mountains.  Made friendly by many years (starting around 5000 B.C.) of Oman’s role as part of one trade route or another, the people we saw had an outgoing cheeriness–from the men who changed our money into rials and stamped our visas (joking with us, to our amazement, instead of giving us the usual Bureaucratic Stern Look) to the souk owners proud of their silver, their carved coral from Zanzibar, their frankincense and myrrh, who responded with a smile when we asked, “Best price?” and gracefully went lower.  Though we went out for a quick and spontaneous bit in a boat, we didn’t have time or background for diving, but we were assured the diving is fabulous.

• Everywhere, I also fell in love with food.  What we mostly ate comes from places like Lebanon, we were told, because the traditional, pre-oil-discovery food of the Arabian Gulf was the stewed goat and the like of Bedouin camps. My joy started with a sumptuous buffet at the New Park Hotel in Kuwait.
  Since Middle Eastern food has spread all over the world, nothing I ate was an unusual dish, but everything tasted tongue-dazzlingly delicious and new, both because the ingredients were so fresh–every fruit and vegetable picked ripen–and because I’d been hungry for hummus (here served with jeweled red pomegranate shining on the side) ever since the Omar Kyam restaurant in Addis Ababa told me they didn’t have any.  Zucchini.  Green beans.  Carrots, tender and bright orange.  Garlicky artichoke hearts.  Ah…
  

Hotel in Oman

Picture, next, breakfast on the patio of the Radisson Hotel in Oman with the blue–sheen of a swimming pool in the foreground and peachy–white minarets against dark mountains in the background.  Imagine chewy apricots, dates, crunchy walnuts, the freshest vegetables, hummus silky and lustrous with olive oil.  I could go on, but why make our mouths water?

• “Are you going to write about the Middle East?” students asked me everywhere.   In a way, I told them, I already had. During the years I worked on The Feverbird's Claw (May 2004), I drew on both memory and research of peoples and geography that northeastern Africa and southern Arabia share.  But I think I also understand something else that glimmers under the surface of that question.

“Many of you, like me,” I told them, “have either already traveled or will soon travel to other countries…either as visitors or students or to live…only to discover that people generally misunderstand the places of your childhood.  I know how hard it can be.  I know in particular that we in the United States often seem oblivious to life outside our borders.”  (Joke aside: What do you call a person who knows three languages? Trilingual.  What do you call a person who knows two languages?  Bilingual.  What do you call a person who knows one language?  An American.)  “Hang onto this truth,” I said.  “Writing gives you power.  If you learn to write well, you’ll have a way–as I finally did–to share your memories. Writing well can also give you the power to capture the attention of thoughtful people no matter where you go.”

In my hands, I held reminders of what I was saying–not only my own books but also Reading Lolita In Teheran.  At every stop, Azar Nafisi’s words echoed in my mind, true of reading, true of travel: “A novel is not an allegory, I said, as the period was about to come to an end.  It is the sensual experience of another world.  If you don’t enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won’t be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel.  This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience.  So start breathing.  I just want you to remember this.  That is all; class dismissed.” -- Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita In Teheran