On Saturday, October 19th, I presented at the closing plenary of the Vermont Palestine Conference at the Old North End Community Center in Burlington on the No Surveillance in Healthcare campaign, outlining who Eleos is, and why we in Southern Vermont for Palestine feel it is an important and powerful …
This dystopian future is blowing up my phone
Or “Israel Boycotts Itself” This past Tuesday, our little town’s Selectboard voted to enact an “Acceptable Community Conduct Ordinance,” marking a definitive break from its self-declaration as a “Compassionate Community” seven years prior. Seven years to shift from humanizing people who have fallen on hard times (albeit with a very …
An inoculation against crocodile tearjerkers
On the 42nd anniversary of the Sabra & Shatila massacre, I’m reminded of this film “Waltz with Bashir”, an Israeli apologia for its soldiers’ role in the massacre. Mark my words: within the next decade we will witness a whole genre of similar hand-wringing as Israelis wrestle with what they’ve …
Back in the Belly of the Beast—رجوع إلى بطن السوء
I’ll continue with the travel narrative in a bit, but here’s something a bit more recent Well, after a hellish day of traveling, I’m back in the US of A. It was something of an unhappy arrival. I had a short scheduled layover in JFK airport in New York before …
Northern Jordan–شمال الأردن
The following day, we planned to go somewhat early to the Dibeen Reserve, one of the less-developed of RSCN’s nature sanctuaries, hoping to avoid the fees associated with the parks that have more facilities for visitors. I asked the hotel owner where we could get some foul, a question which …
Chariots Afire—عربات مشتعل
Getting out of Damascus ended up being rather more complicated than we had expected. The staff at our hotel had given us rather specific times—five of them, in fact—at which busses leave from the Sulmariya station on the outskirts of town to Amman. We were aiming to catch the 3pm …
A war, in three dimensions—الحرب في ثلاثة أبعاد
I decided to visit the Tishreen War Panorama in the morning of the day we were to leave Damascus. Tishreen Al-‘Awal is the Levantine name for the month of October, so this was a monument to the war begun on the 6th of October, 1973, commonly called the Yom Kippur …
R&R in Damascus—الإستراحة والإرتياح في الشام
Our day in Damascus was slow, easy and relaxing. We wandered again around the old city, visiting the palace of As`ad Pasha al-Azem, the 18th century governor of Damascus. It was bigger and more elabrate architecturally than its smaller cousin that I wrote about in Hama, but the latter had …
From the cloister to the metropolis—من الدير إلى العاصمة
I woke up good and early—around 4am—to head out toward Damascus. Luckily, my alarm wasn’t too loud, and I woke up quickly, so it didn’t seem to wake anyone else up. I got up and moved my knee around a bit and hoped that the lack of pain would continue …
Asceticism—الزهد
As I look back upon the ride to the monastary of Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi, I have to ask myself if I wasn’t engaging in a bit of self-flagellation. It was certainly painful, if it didn’t exactly bring me closer to God. It started out well enough. I got up …
Homs with Tahini—حمص مع طحينة
Just after finishing that last post and heading out the door of the internet cafe, a torrential downpour struck Homs, quite unexpectedly. The streets flooded, the traffic cop across the way retreated into his little capsule and, amazingly, I didn’t see any wrecks (amazing because of the very slick roads …
A short trip—مشوار قصير
After several days in Hama hoping for Elaina to recover from her mysterious illness (which at this stage has been diagnosed as a kidney infection resulting from heat exhaustion), I’ve taken off on my own. Elaina seems to be on the mend (yet still not ready to ride), and with …
Wrong turns & chance encounters—لفات غلطة ومصادفات
We dawdled a bit on the way out of Lattakia—getting up late, having a leisurely breakfast—mostly because we thought we’d have to take care of some bureaucracy to extend our visas, which meant we would want to leave after the worst of the mid-day heat had passed anyway. It turned …
Intermodal—وصائل النقل المتعددة
The last several days have involved travel via a number of different modes of transportation. As I noted in my last post, the folks at the Jisr ash-Shughur train station were kind enough to store our bikes for us so that we could ride the train to Damascus to meet …
The Kindness of Strangers—لطف الغرباء
If ever there were a place that deserved to have this as their motto, Syria would be it. In the three days Elaina and I spent bike touring between Aleppo and Jisr ash-Shughur, we were constantly offered to share tea, eat food and stay the night. Even at grocery stores, …