Talking with Strangers

Talking with Strangers: An Australian Woman Alone in the Middle East

By Robyn Webb

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Robyn Webb

License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

More information about the book and author is online at www.talkingwithstrangers.com or email info@talkingwithstrangers.com

National Library of Australia Cataloging-in-Publication entry:

Author: Webb, Robyn.

Title: Talking with strangers [electronic resource]: an Australian woman alone in the Middle East / Robyn Webb.

ISBN: 978 098741 7 800 (ebook)

Subjects: Webb, Robyn.

Women travelers--Middle East.

Middle East--Description and travel.

Women travelers--Africa, North.

Dewey Number: 915.604

All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright owner.

To everyone who wishes for a better world.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1: Australia

Chapter 2: Greece

Chapter 3: Turkey

Chapter 4: Syria

Chapter 5: Jordan

Chapter 6: Egypt

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Nothing ever prepares me for what happens when I travel.

Not just the sights, the history or the people I connect with. Every time I leave my home and visit another’s, I find something greater; something I can never predict or fully prepare for.

My society is a cocoon. It is a system of values, rules and customs allowing millions of people to live together in close proximity, in relative safety, peace, and in a ‘standard’, or way, of living that they couldn’t create on their own.

The system was developed over thousands of years by my predecessors when they lived together, developed communities and struggled to cope with droughts, wars, invasions and other events of the times. Circumstances and influences changed erratically and continually, and the values, rules and customs of the society adapted to maintain the standard of living and allow the society to survive. Ideas, art and technologies were brought from other societies, adapted and integrated, until it became impossible to distinguish what the society was at the beginning and what was brought in.

Of course, circumstances still change and influences are introduced, and my society is still adapting. Sometimes it defends itself by providing explanations for why parts of the world are different, and why they are wrong. Even when the explanation bears no resemblance to the truth, the explanation serves its purpose by insulating the society. In this way, the society’s rules, values and customs are not challenged and the society survives in roughly the same way. Still, I expect that my society will always be changing in some way because the environmental, social and world influences never cease.

Now it exists and functions with and for its participants, providing a system of existence that operates without effort. The rules, customs and values are not spoken, not written and not obvious, yet they work as a consistent whole. Sometimes people break them, but the society has rules for that too. Of course, the society doesn’t work for some people in their circumstances at a particular time, some events and values are completely unacceptable and some people’s needs and approaches to life are simply not addressed.

I was born into my society. Its rules, customs and values were already mature and operating. As I grew up, I learned the rules, adopted the customs and grew into the values. The society’s values became mine. I learned to drive on the left side of the road and was offended when a person spoke with their mouth full of food. I learnt how to show respect to my family and what not to say to strangers in the street. I understood how to relate with my grandmother and the role that she should play in my upbringing. Even when I rebelled as a teenager, it was within the customs of my society. I knew the consequences and was prepared to deal with them.

Through my education, work, conduct, dress and actions I developed my identity and created a role in the society. I conducted myself by the society’s customs and expected others to abide by them too. I combined the society’s values, rules and customs with my dreams to produce an existence that, while predictable, is comfortable and fulfils most of my needs that I can see. The society adapts and changes over time and I change with it. For the most part it works, but until I travelled, I hadn’t really noticed it at all.

When I travel, I leave behind my known role in my known society and enter a different society where I have no role or knowledge. Then I have to abide by their rules and customs and respect their values, so I can see the place and get along with the people.

I collide almost instantly. While our human needs are all the same, the rules, customs and values of the society can be vastly different. It could be completely incompatible with my own, but overall, still work just as well. At first, the new society looks entirely at odds with mine, but when I begin speaking with people, I see each incompatibility one by one, and begin to piece together the system of customs, rules and values and see them as each as a part in fulfilling human needs and creating a system of existence.

The result is a questioning of everything that my society defined for me. How do I value another person’s life? What am I prepared to do for others? Where is the boundary between two people? Who is it appropriate for a woman to speak to? What do men do for women, and what do women do for themselves? Who made these rules anyway? After all, I never faced the issues or asked the questions that formed the values, rules or customs of my society.

This gives me a choice. By seeing, questioning and then deciding on my values, rules and customs, I am able to create my identity, but this time doing it consciously. This time, I get to choose who I am.

But all this is unpredictable. Until I witness rules and customs in different situations, I am not able to see what mine are. Until I am in a position where my values fail, I am not conscious of the choices that people made which led to other values and rules being developed. Until I leave my home, my identity, values, rules and customs are unconscious, and only when I leave do I get to choose who I am.

Maybe this is why I’m so relaxed about research and read my guidebook on the plane. How do I know what to look for when I don’t know the limitations of my perspective? How can I prepare for finding something when I‘m not aware of the limits of my search? How can I prepare for challenges to my identity when I am not aware of it in the first place? The only preparation I can do is to make this a deliberate action. One of the reasons I’m going away is to challenge and choose who I am.

The other reason for going is the history. I’d wanted to do this trip since studying Middle Eastern History several years ago. It was quite a change from business analysis and IT consulting. When I started learning about complex trade arrangements and advanced civilisations 2000 years before Christ, I knew that I needed to see where it all happened and where western civilisation began.

My planning was much less than I wanted. My consulting contract was finishing, I was burnt-out from working long hours, and Iraq was taking all international attention. This was about as good a time as any to go.

Greek friends helped to get me started with lots of advice and some contacts, but I didn’t know anyone from Turkey, Syria, Lebanon or Jordan. Egypt was popular with European tourists so that was more accessible, and I’d been there briefly once before. Travel journals from people’s visits to Jordan were on the Internet, and the few reports of Syria and Lebanon spoke of hospitality and trust, contradicting the typical Australian media portrayal of the whole area. Whatever my trip was going to be, it wasn’t something I could really plan for.

I had an understanding of the ancient cultures from my study that could be used to put modern things in context, but I knew little about the present-day societies or Islam. The culture looked sexist, with a woman’s role being to stay at home, raise sons and obey her husband. Iranian and Saudi women apparently needed the permission of their husband or a male relative to leave the country. From the media portrayals of the area, I figured that they wouldn’t look kindly on a single woman. My travel guide suggested a male companion or at least a wedding ring and to dress modestly with long sleeved tops, jeans or long skirts. I bought some well-covering tops and a ring and invented a husband based on one of my friends. I was prepared for a tough trip pushing hard against ingrained male chauvinism simply to get around. It wouldn’t be easy, but hopefully worth it.

Security was a major concern. The US had invaded Iraq in March 2003 and the US president declared success and the end of hostilities two months later. By August, the US was blaming insurgents for the escalating violence, and Syria for a ‘porous border’ that was letting terrorists into Iraq. With the international spotlight on Iraq, I figured that the US was too absorbed to cause any more trouble in the region and all the terrorists were heading to Iraq. The problems weren’t going to stop any time soon, but they were focused where I wasn’t going, and I could avoid the eastern part of Syria just in case.

Most of the logistics were done at the last minute. The moment of truth was when my apartment was rented and I suddenly had no home. It was only then that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be in Australia any more.

My itinerary was brief and based on the sites of my study. I worked the order around the available transport and kept some options open as I expected to find other places to visit while I was there.

I arranged my visas and money and packed my bag. The rest of it was left to the gods, except for the part about arriving in Athens sometime before the end of the day. Then I climbed onto a plane and started my trip knowing that I would never be the same again.

[top]

Chapter 1: Australia

‘Have you got your passport?’ he asks, his face ashen with worry.

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘Have you booked your hotels?’ he continues, fixing his eyes on my face.

‘I’ll do that when I’m there, Dad.’

‘Don’t talk to any strange men, will you?’

‘Dad, they’re all going to be strange men.’

‘Well, be careful, won’t you?’

Mum is sitting with her elbows resting on the dining table, gazing at nothing and scratching the same spot on her arm over and over and over again. She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing. Dad is always more vocal when he’s nervous. He twists his hands on the table and then jumps up to offer everyone some more wine.

‘No thanks, Dad. I’ll have to get going soon or I’ll miss my bus.’

This weekend is the last time I’m seeing my family before I go. They have barely been out of Australia and now their eldest daughter is going to ‘Terrorist Central’, also known as the Middle East, for a holiday. Why I don’t do something like discover Perth or go camping at Uluru, they still don’t understand. Weeks before, I’d tried the analogy of Adelaide people believing they had a safe city, while the rest of the world heard only about serial murders and shark attacks, but that didn’t even register with them.

‘Are you giving us your itinerary, dear?’

Giving them an itinerary was asking for trouble. While they used fixed appointments, times and arrivals, I had a list of places and had roughly divided my time between each of the countries I was visiting. The idea of an itinerary ruled out most of the things that I discovered about a place while I was there, which were usually the most interesting.

‘I don’t have an itinerary, Dad. There are places I want to see and the rest works out along the way.’

I had phoned them a few weeks before and told them where I was going. There was deadly silence when I mentioned Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Before then, they only knew about Greece and Turkey and could almost accept that. Over time, they had trained themselves to be quiet instead of trying to talk me out of my plans. Now they didn’t know where to start in trying to convince me not to go, and they knew it was pointless anyway.

My passion for ancient history was also completely lost on them. I couldn’t explain my fascination and joy at piecing together ancient cultures, customs and knowledge. Finding the origin of aspects of civilisation and seeing how different people in different circumstances contributed to it all, gave me a different way to understand modern day cultures, ascertain how they were and weren’t working, and see how they did and didn’t meet the needs of the people who lived in them.

‘Email us every day so we know where you are and that you’re okay.’

Email is great. I can be anywhere in the world, with anything happening around me, and the email will still look the same. While it was good to stay in contact, I wanted to be in the places I was going, experience them in all the depth that I could and do the inquiry that only comes from being there. Constant communication with home would give me a lifeline that would stop me from doing that, and would keep me locked into Australian culture and ways of thinking.

‘I’ll email you when I can, Dad. I don’t know what the internet café situation will be like.’

Mum gets up and hugs me, then stiffens herself when tears appear in her eyes. Then she hugs me again for what she thinks is the very last time.

‘Be careful, dear,’ she whispers, trying not to let her voice falter.

Dad hugs me for a hundred years then remembers that he has to let go. He takes a breath to give me some last-second advice but stops.

‘Look after yourself, Dear’, they call over noise of the car engine starting.

‘Bye.’

‘Ring us before you go! Good bye Dear!’

[top]

Chapter 2: Greece

According to my travel guide, this was the cheapest hotel in Athens. John’s Place was in the backstreets of Syntagma Square and close to Plaka, the Acropolis and the trains. It occupied the top floors of an old Athenian building on a street being refurbished for the Olympics. It would do.

The old woman looked annoyed as she handed me the oversized key and showed me the room with a small window and the bathroom next door. I had to get used to throwing my used toilet paper in a bin now, because most Greek plumbing was too narrow and blocked easily. I made a mental note that thongs were a necessity in the hand-held shower. Then she hurried back to the hotel lounge and her TV show.

Greece was an easy place to start my trip around the Middle East because I was already used to the culture from all my friends in Australia. I had already arranged to visit my friend’s mother on the island of Lemnos. She had moved there a few years ago and asked me several times to come and stay with her. I called her my Greek Mum, she knew me so well.

I also thought starting in Greece was a good way to get used to travelling again before having to adapt to Muslim culture and the problems I expected as a single woman in Arab countries. After the rush of packing up my flat, job and life in Melbourne I could ease into it while starting to visit the places of my uni study that I’d done a few years ago.

I knew about Athens from the Classical Period, starting around 800 BCE, when it had similar military power to the cities of Sparta and Corinth. From the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, I knew of the constant power struggles between Athens and Sparta and of the Peloponnesian wars that went for thirty years. When the Greeks weren’t fighting each other, they were usually fighting the Persians. The bravery of the Greeks in the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis are still part of the Greek identity.

What also interested me about Athens was in the period after the execution of Socrates in 399 BCE. Athens had suffered a series of military defeats, had a series of violent dictators and then the Persians invaded and destroyed what was left. The Athenians wanted someone to blame. Socrates was an unpopular philosopher who challenged peoples’ ethics and encouraged young people to think for themselves instead of blindly following tradition. He was an easy target. When he was charged with impiety and corrupting Athens’ youth, he refused to submit or endorse the traditions, and so was executed by drinking the poisonous herb hemlock.

Only then did the Athenians realise what they had done, and that they had to choose. They could either return to the tyranny and fear forced onto them by the surrounding Greek states, or choose their democracy, freedom of thought and citizen’s rights that Socrates was attempting to uphold. They chose the latter, and their rights were cemented into the makeup of Athens and are instrumental in democracies today.

I hoped to find the remnants of that choice in the people, the awareness that allowed them to rise above their emotions and establish equal rights for their citizens. Many of my Greek friends in Australia were very insightful and would have easily fitted into Athens at that time. Hopefully the ruins in Athens would also show the evidence of cultural and artistic evolution, and show times of expansion, wealth and global importance. Archaeologically too, Athens was a great place to start.

My first encounter with Athens was confusing. It was being renovated for the Olympics the following year, and the area where I was staying was one massive building site. Regional buses ran from two bus stations, but neither was close to the centre, nor were they easy to find. Knowing a café with reliably good food and coffee was now a fond memory. Many cafés served only instant coffee, which I refused to drink even at home and wasn’t going to start drinking here. Prices had been doubled with the introduction of the Euro, which made my budget of AUD100 per day even more difficult. I expected my sight-seeing pace to be about the same as my life in Melbourne and made easier by not having to work, but this was continually thwarted by my not knowing Athens and my memory retention failing from information overload. I was continually downgrading my food expectations and pushing out my schedule.

Remnants of the old city of Athens were certainly visible. Lights lit up the Acropolis, or high city, at the top of the hill, and it looked like a great navigation point from anywhere in Athens – I could see it easily at night. The Agora, or old marketplace, would probably be nearby and the oldest parts of Athens below that. Parts of the hill looked untouched and were probably unexcavated. Maybe under the dirt were the remains of the normal people’s homes and lives, but often very little remained to be uncovered. Around the hill was a labyrinth of pathways and white-washed buildings, homes, businesses and entertainment, operating wherever there was a space. Modern music blared amongst strings of electric lights, the buzz of conversation and the noise of young people.

First things to see in Athens were the Parthenon, the amphitheatre dedicated to Dionysus and the rest of the Acropolis on the same hill. The outer façade of the Acropolis only just hid the scaffold, and construction rubble lay between pieces of column and flagstone. Luckily, the museum here was ready. The newly painted walls complimented the statues, artefacts and carvings, and the descriptions were in Greek and English. The main Athens museum was completely closed for renovation, so I had to imagine the old city and its culture from the current one.

I walked through the streets at the back of the Acropolis on the way back to Plaka. It was easy to imagine ancient Greeks in robes and leather sandals carrying baskets of produce in the oldest remaining parts of the city. The roads were uneven, narrow, stone pathways leading up and down the hills with taverns dotted throughout the area. I wondered how much it had changed, allowing for advances in technology.

I phoned Christos, a cousin of a Melbourne friend and introduced myself. He worked for a freight company in the mornings and as a photographer in the afternoons. He was in his early forty’s, unmarried, quiet, conservative and a gentleman, and filled his time with photography and visits to the Greek islands. Having been around my friends from Melbourne, he knew enough English. He was expecting me to phone, and invited me to Rhodes the following week. In the meantime, Athens proved to be a good base to start sight-seeing, and I arranged bus trips to Delphi, Sparta and Corinth.

I wanted to get settled into my new life of backpacking as soon as I could. I discovered a Greek brand of natural skin care that was available all over Athens. My Aussie supplies would last for a while, but not months, so I collected enough to last until the middle of Turkey without overloading my baggage. My clothes were now washed in my room hand basin, which was made more challenging by not bringing a bathplug, and not knowing how to find one because I didn’t know the language, the shops, or where to look. Of course, Athens shopping was different to Melbourne shopping. I would probably be leaving just when I worked out Athens and the differences between Greece and home.

Slipping into the Greek lifestyle was like travelling on a rough and bumpy road and then finding a groove left by a hundred other cars. Athens started early in the morning when the air was fresh. Everything was open until the early afternoon, when shops and offices would close when everyone had an afternoon nap. People in the street became scarce as the hot afternoon sun beat down. Even the stray cats and dogs, usually a regular sight anywhere in the city, would go into hiding. It didn’t take me long to slip into Greek timing either. Soon I was using mid afternoon to find a shady spot to relax with a book, take a quiet walk through the narrow whitewashed Athenian streets or browse through the tourist fare that engulfed the suburb of Plaka. Plaka was all whitewashed ancient walls and narrow winding streets and walkways, with t-shirts hanging from the tops of the walls. Tables were filled with rows and rows of small statues of Greek gods, goddesses and symbolic characters jutted into the streets. It felt ancient, too, with a modern tourist overlay. One corner shop had made their windows into a modern style to display their modern-styled jewellery. A man who worked in the hotel had a stall in the middle of a small plaza, selling small balloons filled with plaster and shaped into animals. He looked after the guests and rooms when the old woman was out. He gave me one of his creations and showed me the different facial expressions he could make with them. I think he was Romanian, making some money in between his uni study.

I sat at a café after a day of sorting out sites to visit, looking for food shops and planning my time. An old gypsy man played the violin while he looked for people who were paying attention. I discretely glanced at him and then back at my phone, but I was seen and he came over to my table and continued to play.

I shook my head and heard him say ‘Bah!’ as he walked away to find some paying customers. It was intimidating being expected to hand over money so quickly.

One of the only places that didn’t stick to Greek timing was the street of Ermou. This was the main mall in Athens and was full of young women shopping for clothes. Neither did the suburb of Monastiraki, which was the trendy part of Athens, where lunch would blow my whole day’s budget. In other parts of the city, men trundled between shops and outdoor seats, playing with their komboloi: a string of wooden beads, by twirling them around their fingers and then throwing it back into their pocket before serving a customer or sitting down to talk over a cup of coffee and countless cigarettes. Given the quality of the traditional Greek diet, smoking was probably their main cause of death. It couldn’t have been stress: I saw many groups of men engulfed in nothing more than conversation, smoking and swinging their komboloi. It looked like a great lifestyle, but I only saw the men sitting around.

I was in the park leading to the Acropolis, enjoying the quiet of an Athens afternoon when a man started talking to me while I was reading. He was a naval archaeologist working with the Olympics, designing models of ancient ships. I was interested in hearing about ancient naval history, but he had other intentions and didn’t accept any of my polite refusals. After a few phone calls and obligatory meetings without me learning anything about naval archaeology, I was glad to leave him behind.

Then the waiter in the restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel, who had seemed polite enough, became quite persistent. He managed to catch me every time I went in or out of the hotel and invited me to dinner or coffee. The scheming look on his face made me suspicious.

The sudden increase in male attention made me uncomfortable, as I didn’t get this from Australian men. I also didn’t like all the requests for money and demands to buy things from people on the street. I wasn’t used to people being so up front and forceful. I wondered how Greek women dealt with it all. Then I wondered what attention I would attract in Arabic countries, if it was worse than Greece, and how I could handle it with the minimum amount of trouble. Australians didn’t like saying no, and didn’t like confrontations either.

For days