18 months overdue, and a squirrel

Reporting from lab this afternoon. I am procrastinating from studying for my Final Final (Ever?! I thought I was done in 2009 when I took the Chem 390 exam and happily tripped home afterwards, pausing under a big tree on the Slope to be prematurely nostalgic).

This morning I paused in the drizzle on the walk to work. A squirrel had died on the sidewalk, probably under the wheel of a bicycle, crumpled quietly near a bush. This was nothing particularly new - what struck me was a frantic smaller squirrel that rushed at the fallen one, prodding it and nuzzling it, only to be scared back under the bush by each passing bicycle. It kept darting out, making heartbreaking clucky little squirrel noises and almost lifting the dead squirrel up with its nudges.

I watched the scene for a few minutes and then headed inside out of the rain. The scene got me thinking about writing, and how I want to learn more about squirrels (and whales!), and this sort of thing. And so I have an oddly timed desire to share the following bit of writing with you. I never finished recounting my trip to Lebanon and Syria last September in this blog, but did write about it for a writing class that I took for fun last quarter. The piece is followed by a few pictures.

After Hours at the Roman Ruins of Baalbak

It’s a bit tricky to see the Six Pillars of Lebanon at the most magical time of day. You have to get the timing just so – the ticket office to the ruins closes half an hour prior to sunset, and probably you left Syria later than you meant to, lingering over a Turkish coffee at the bus stop before realizing you weren’t at the bus stop. And even though the border crossing goes surprisingly well, in Baalbak just when you mean to head down to the ruins, a sweet wrinkled mother might invite you, in halting French, to take tea on her rooftop. You will find it impossible to say no. And by the time you’ve met the family and finished your second cup of tea and discussed Syrian cinema and given away your email address on so many scraps of paper, the sun will have dropped deep into the valley, and you’d better let the oldest son Mohammad show you the back way to the ruins to get there on time.

And he will do just that, guiding you down narrow streets while explaining that even if we are late, it should be fine, this is a small town and the guard working the gate to the ruins is his friend from elementary school. But maybe by the time you arrive at the ruins, there is no longer a guard at the gate, just a large padlock across it, and so Mohammad will suggest that only thing to do is throw your backpack over the gate and start climbing the fence. The worst thing that could happen as you vault yourself to the other side is that the guard might return, which he will, and since this is the worst case scenario, he will also be the one stranger to Mohammad in all of Baalbak and so Mohammad probably won’t be able to convince him to let these fence-hopping Americans in, it is too late, khalas. You may think this is a good time to offer to “buy some tickets” from the guard. It is not. Such attempts at bribery will injure the pride of this toiling guard, and he will likely become infuriated, and ask, “You want me to go to jail? You want to go to jail?” Nobody wants to go to jail, so probably at this point you give up.

If you are lucky, though, Mohammad, who has already witnessed the magnificence behind the fence and around the corner, will not be so easily defeated. He may sulk with you a while, but then he may also remember the exit door to the ruins, and walk you over there. At this gate, there will be no guard, just an old shifty-looking groundskeeper counting the visitors leaving the ruins. Mohammad will pull him aside, say a few words in a friendly tone - and the groundskeeper will likely nod in agreement. “You can give him a little money when you leave, if you like, but it is not necessary,” Mohammad will probably explain to you. Later on, when you are running from this man and the police through the alleys of Baalbak, you’ll find that something was dramatically misunderstood, but in the meantime you’re probably just thrilled to have snuck in. If you get the timing right, by now it should be five, maybe ten minutes to sunset. The muezzins of the valley will be warming up their voices for the maghreb call to prayer, the stars will be brightening above the minarets, the ancient stone pillars will be warming under the heat of incandescent spotlights, and you will have arrived just in time for the magic.

The view from Fatima's balcony (where we had tea before the ruins). I was too shy to ask to take a picture of her family.

Taken as the call to prayer began.

The Six Pillars of Lebanon. I didn't realize until looking at other photos just now how lucky I was to catch them at such a dramatic time; the lighting makes everything much more epic.

Revolt, Security, Soda

I'm supposed to be reading up on upconvertors or maybe calculating etch times and deposition angles, but the news in the Middle East is too fascinating right now. I was sucked in by the NYT (the photograph of Tahrir Square is UNREAL), looked for more photographs over at BBC, saw what NPR had to add to the conversation (not much) and finally went to Al Jazeera, knowing well that once I started clicking on opinion pieces there, there was no chance I'd get any work done before my 2 PM meeting. Holy crap! The Arab world has become Revolution HQ and I'm excited to follow the outcomes of the protests. Egypt's been getting the most coverage here in the US, but there are protests going down in Yemen and Jordan as well.

I only know slightly more than nothing about these far flung lands for having traveled to them, and while it's not enough to have a strong clear opinion about what's going on, it's enough to make me curious and sympathetic. The photographs of young Egyptian men and pieces like this about the issues young Arabs are dealing with took me straight to a warm Doha night by the pool in ASAS twin towers. A young security guard - the manager for the night shift - named Amro had invited me to have a soda with him by the pool.

We had met Amro in not-so-dignified circumstances - our affinity for late nights in the steam room and sauna didn't officially fly with building policy, since the girls would sneak into the men's locker room to hang out with the bro bros (long after any sane male residents would be down there). Consequently, security had occasionally crashed our party and sent the ladies packing, until one night Hollin started chatting with friendly Amro, who admitted he didn't really care, and as long as we turned the steam and heat off when we left they'd leave us alone.

Anyways, Amro would occasionally come hang out with us, maybe to practice his English, probably because he was bored at work, and one day asked me if I would like to have a soda with him that week. We met at the beginning of his shift, and I learned that he was from Egypt but had worked in Doha for several years. He didn't love it, but his previous work in Egypt as an English teacher was too frustrating to return to. It was next to impossible to find a job in Egypt, and those who were employed as teachers made fractions of what he earned as a security guard in the Gulf. Amro supervised the Nepali guards contracted to work for the building. At one point, when the fire alarm system in our building didn't work, one task of these guards was to sit in a dark hallway on each floor with an emergency horn, serving as a human fire alarm for an eight hour shift. For an impressively fluent English speaker with ambitions to teach young Egyptians, the job seemed a bit stifling.

But he had no intention of returning to Egypt. The Gulf was where money was, and back home there was no hope for change. So Amro had resigned himself to life in Doha, interacting with English speakers whenever possible to keep working on his English. The best he could hope for was to work for Qatar Gas, which paid better than the gig at ASAS. I rarely saw him after that night he bought me a warm Sprite. Within a few months, I had left Doha to seek opportunities in my homeland. I wish for the same were possible for Amro and his countless brothers scattered throughout the Gulf.