Zora O'Neill's Blog, page 9

Doha: Food at Souq Waqif

I think I cottoned to Doha for one huge reason: street food.

A while back, Anissa Helou posted something on her blog about take-away food at Souq Waqif in Doha. On my Emirates trip, I’d been snooping around for traditional Emirati food, but it’s a little hard to find done well. People don’t go out for it at restaurants typically. So when I went to Doha, I went straight over to the Souq Waqif after visiting the Museum of Islamic Art.

I didn’t see the souq before they redid it, and some people say it’s too slick now, but I can handle a discreetly signed Haagen-Dazs store if the place still seems like locals use it more than be-fanny-packed tourists. I saw a lot of nice cafes and restaurants, and I was already giddy from that, since I hadn’t seen such a casual hangout space in Dubai or Abu Dhabi. And I saw lots of spices, blinged-out fabrics and even some little colored chicks for sale.

But then I rounded a corner on the far side of the market and SHAZAM!

Ragag, like a crepe complete, minus the ham...and with mayo

Homemade pickles and chutney thingies

I bellied up to one of the tables and asked to see what was in the pots. I wound up with a big container of hisw, a seed that had been boiled to jelly, and seasoned with sugar, ghee, saffron and black pepper. Then scrambled eggs were stirred in. Dude.

Better than it looks. And sounds.

I went back to those ladies and got great stuff from them all three nights I was in Doha.

Deep down, I admit I’d been feeling a little suspicious of the Emirates because there was no street food–I just couldn’t wrap my head around a place like that. To be fair, there are perfectly good reasons why you might not want to be eating food on the street, and why no one would want to sell it to you: namely, every degree of heat over 100, which is quite common.

So why does it flourish in Doha (perhaps only in this one spot in the whole country, but still), and not the Emirates? Those ladies were freezing their butts off the nights I was there. I don’t know what happens in the summer. I did read something in passing about a Qatari program to teach traditional foods–maybe that also encourages the food-sellers here?

And that’s not to say there aren’t amazingly good things to eat in the Emirates–they’re just indoors. Check out I Live in a Frying Pan, and the post she wrote for Serious Eats about Dubai eats. I got to eat lunch with Arva at a Rajasthani restaurant that filled my ghee quota for the decade.

In both places, I was happily surprised about the food. It just made me a tiny bit nervous in the Emirates to have to really plan to find it. And I would totally recommend a trip to Doha just for the Souq Waqif.

Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

I love getting on a plane with no luggage. It has happened only a couple of times in my life. I feel ridonkulously jet-set. This time, I packed just a tote bag to fly from Dubai to Doha overnight. I was going to meet some excellent smart people, and to see the Museum of Islamic Art. Doha was so great that I went back again for a few more days at the end of my trip.

I went straight from the plane to the museum, in one of Doha’s adorable Tiffany’s-blue taxis, where the West African cabbie was playing American R&B.

Looks a tiny bit like Boba Fett, right?

The museum is beautiful. Seriously, drop dead. The building is lovely.

The collection is amazing, and gorgeously arranged, all carefully spotlit in black rooms.

Screens from clay water jars

Astrolabes. Like I said, they're everywhere.

They even solved the astrolabe problem (ie, what to do with 800 of them). Nice presentation, right?

Even the food is fantastic. Alain Ducasse is on the case.

Lentil salad, egg, some kind of savory biscotti-bit, tangy sauce.

And, y’know, just to be extra-classy, they have free wi-fi.

But…I wish it said more. All the things I learned about Islamic art on this trip, I learned at the dowdier Museum of Islamic Civilization in Sharjah the day before. At that museum, many of the objects were somewhat crude replicas. But the signage told me all about calligraphy styles, the embroidery on the kiswa at the Kaaba and that elephant clock I’d seen at the Ibn Battuta Mall.

I think this is a bit of a trend in museum-ing, to just let objects speak for themselves, no interpretation. And perhaps that’s more extreme in this case, where the aim may have been to separate the objects from all this messy Islam business and the complicated past and just look at things as incredibly gorgeous works of art. Which they are.

The contrast was even more dramatic when I came back on my next visit and went to the Takashi Murakami exhibit and the Cai Gui-Qiang show at Mathaf. Both of these shows were amazing, in part because they were presented in a distinctly didactic way. “Hello, meet Takashi Murakami. He’s famous for X, Y and Z, and to appreciate him, you should know 1, 2 and 3.”

Inflatable Murakami

I admit I hadn’t appreciated Murakami before. At this show (where you can’t take pics inside), I could get up close and see the layers of acrylic paint. I saw the change in his style. And the enormous Arhat installation, huge panels in part a reaction to the Japan tsunami (here’s a detail), got me in the gut the way his glossier stuff never has.

Over at Mathaf, I learned all about this Chinese guy (who, der, is quite famous and has been doing things in NYC for ages and I’ve totally missed). The space showed work he’d created specifically for Mathaf–smart stuff showing the connection between where he’s from in China and the Gulf–along with footage of his previous pyrotechnic works and some of his wonderful early oil paintings of explosions.

Stones from Quanzhou, carved with inscriptions from the Muslim cemetery there

I even learned a ton of weird stuff about Arabian horse breeding, from a video he produced. Again, a very educational, meet-the-artist approach.

I love that Qatar is investing so heavily in art. I just want to see the next step in the Museum of Islamic Art. The absence of interpretation there seems like a waste. “Explaining” art–giving more historical background, translating some of the calligraphy–shouldn’t hurt at all. The museum could use some of the same exuberant let-us-tell-you-about-this-amazing-stuff! spirit in the other two exhibits.

For now, the most exuberant thing is the food.

UAE Novelty Break!

OK, here’s all my silly pictures in one go. Or most of them anyway. These were taken all over the United Arab Emirates, though mostly in Dubai. Click the pic for bigger versions.

Under Construction in the Emirates

During my trip to the Emirates, one of the main things I wanted to do was drive out into the desert and see the dunes. I grew up in a desert, and I’ve traveled around the deserts in Egypt a bit, but they’re not the same. I still had never seen that super-duney, English Patient kind of desert up close.

Abu Dhabi is the largest of the United Arab Emirates, and in addition to being a pretty slick and functioning city proper, it stretches way out west into the desert, up to the undefined border with Saudi Arabia.

So I drove way out to Liwa, which is a little cluster of settlements along some oases. And because even when I’m not working on a guidebook, I’m pretty curious about fancy hotels, I decided I’d drop in to the Anantara Qasr al-Sarab resort for lunch.

There are only, like, three roads in Abu Dhabi, but I managed to get lost. My Google GPS told me to turn down a dirt road, and I did. Just about the time I was realizing that a rustic approach to a luxury hotel was one thing, but this road was clearly not right, I passed a ghost town.

A mirage on the horizon

I parked my car and hiked down to the trailers. Just like in a good Western, there was a door blowing in the wind, creaking and slapping against the tinny side of a double-wide.

That was spooky enough, but then I heard the faint sound of voices. As I got closer, I realized it was a radio or a TV. Somehow, an inhabited ghost town is even creepier than an empty one.

But it was just one guard, watching TV to pass the time. He said it was fine if I took some photos.

Toilets. Lots of toilets.

Click to see full-size, for the drawing on the wall.

The trusty guard. The only other living thing around was a bird, also yellow.

Virtually everything in the Emirates has been built by guest laborers. Thousands of people can work on a major construction project–the Burj Khalifa in Dubai employed some 10,000 people. This often calls for an independent workers’ town, with bare-bones housing and other services. Smaller projects still often have an adjoining workers’ camp.

This is what I’d driven past, on this wrong road. The guard confirmed my guess–this had been the workers’ camp for the Qasr al-Sarab, which was just over a couple of dunes ahead. It was slowly being dismantled–the good parts, like the toilets, salvaged, and the trailers carted away on trucks.

I said thanks, and then drove off back down the washboarded road and back to the highway. One kilometer farther along was the proper entrance to the resort, with a perfectly smooth black surface curving through the dunes. No eyesore trailers to be seen. The resort, when I got there, was astoundingly beautiful. The construction workers did a fantastic job.

The entrance.

Every construction project in the Emirates has its own ghost town, a negative form that’s destroyed once the real sculpture is created.

Hey, Ladies! What to Wear in the Middle East

Last week, my esteemed colleague Celeste Brash published her Top 5 clothing picks for women traveling to hot, conservative countries.

It’s a great list, but in the heart of the Middle East, you’re dealing with dry heat and more-conservative modesty norms. So I thought I’d share what I usually pack for a Middle East trip. Let’s begin with a parable:

I once saw a Russian woman in hot pants at the Pyramids. First, I had an urge to grab her ass. Then I got heatstroke just looking at her.

Moral: There are two very good reasons to keep your skin covered in the Middle East. First, of course, is it’s just polite, and even normal people like myself (er) can respond strangely to the sight of naked flesh if they don’t see it often. Second, that sun will kill you.

I tend to spend most of my time in cities, so I want to look dressier, rather than sporty. But most of my wardrobe can adapt fine to a day in the desert or a hike up Mount Sinai.

1. Long-sleeve, button-front silk shirts.

I used to pick these up at thrift stores all the time, and I still do occasionally find one, but I have less time to comb the racks. I haven’t found a reliable first-hand source for them yet, but I always keep an eye out.

Hmmm... This doesn't look bad. But $98? That's why: thrift stores.

Silk is really sturdy and super-lightweight. It dries in a second, if you do a sink wash, and it’s hardy enough to handle whatever they do at the drop-off laundry. Buy dark colors, so it’s not see-through, and/or patterns (to hide stains).

If you can’t find silk, then button-front lightweight cotton shirts are fine. Either way, you want them to be longish–hanging over half your butt, if possible, and the sleeves should be full length. You can roll the sleeves up to your elbows, or keep them buttoned at your wrist if you’re in a very conservative situation, or cold.

2. Skinny ankle-length cotton or nylon pants with pockets.

Contrary to Celeste’s advice, I think tight clothing is A-OK. It makes you look more city-fied. And it’s not violating any modesty norms in the ME, contrary to what you might think.

I wasn’t planning on my super-skinny cropped cargo pants from J. Crew to be a travel essential, and now I wish I’d bought two pairs.

They’re very tight at the ankle, so they don’t slide down when I’m using a squat toilet. And the pockets are super-useful. I have other ankle-length pants, in nifty nylon-cotton blends, but they always lose because they don’t have pockets.

Typical capris, which end right below the knee or mid-calf, don’t do it for me. That exposes too much flesh for my taste. Too much sunburn and ogling potential.

And I wouldn’t go for leggings because, well, they’ve already got plenty of camel toes in the Middle East! (Thank you, ladies and germs! I’ll be here all week.)

3. Linen trousers.

OK, this is as close as I get to the typical desert-explorer look. I have a couple of pairs in brown and slate gray. Side pockets look proper enough (though you have to be careful about change falling out in buses). Linen is sturdy, and its rumpled-ness is somehow acceptable in high society, but you can also hike in them.

I just roll them up a couple of inches before venturing into any sketchy toilet situation.

4. Silver shoes.

You can wear the daggiest orthopedic things, but if they’re silver (or gold), you suddenly look like a fashion queen. These Doc Martens totally rocked in Cairo–nice thick soles so you can slog through muck.

I'm sorry I abandoned you in Ras al-Khaimah for getting too stinky! Next pair, I'll wear those little socklets, I promise.

It’s a bonus if your shoes are slip-off: easier to go in and out of mosques.

I also just bought these, from Ecco–not slip-off, but I think will do double-duty for low-level hiking.

5. Sports bras and tank tops.

The underpinnings. I’m not at all busty, but I do wear a sturdy bra when I go to Cairo. Young dudes in the street are like those detectors for earthquakes–they’re sensitive to the slightest jiggle.

Honestly, this might be slight overkill on my part–I’m making up for my first time in Cairo, when I actually walked around without a bra, which I wish someone had taken me aside and said, “Ahem.” Instead, some crazed dude grabbed my boob and then practically went skipping off down the street with glee. I think he might’ve felt a little like when I saw the Russian chick in hot pants: Must. Touch. It!!!

On top of a sturdy bra, I wear a very thin cotton tank top that’s very long. This guarantees my shirt isn’t see-through and covers up any gaping between button-front shirt and low-rise pants, or if wind from a bus speeding by blows my shirt up. Right now Uniqlo is making good super-long tank tops. I got some C&C California ones years ago that are nearly threadbare now, but that’s OK, since they’re just an under-layer.

Sort-of 6. Ankle-length skirt, with pockets.

Honestly, I have one of these, and I dutifully pack it every time, but I just can’t quite get on board with it. It’s relatively stylish–linen, tailored, with patch pockets. But it’s just outside the realm of my normal style, and I feel a little too much like Sensible Lady Adventurer when I wear it.

But I’m mentioning it because someone once pointed out a very good reason to wear a skirt while traveling: if you ever have to relieve yourself on the side of a road, perhaps with your whole bus looking on, a skirt gives you a little privacy.

So…just putting it out there.

7. Giant scarf.

Totally agree with Celeste on this. Always have one in your bag. I have a bunch of wonderful silk ones from Syria (sigh), but last year I got a giant (18″ x 84″) not-silk one in Morocco that has turned out to be more useful. It’s a little cozier in a/c situations, and slippery silk is tough as mosque-visit headscarf–this has a little texture so it stays in place.

Looks deceptively small...

And a really, really big scarf with distinctive colors can dress up a whole outfit. My Moroccan scarf has gold thread in it. With my shoes, it’s like an ensemble!

8.Short dresses.

I’m just developing this, but I have a nice mid-thigh stretchy tunic dress that I really like, so I tried it out with my little ankle-length pants, and presto–I’m covered up and hip-looking. Or, you know, as hip as it gets these days.

By the by, I totally yoinked this look off the streets of Cairo. Another Cairo-cool-girl standby: tight black long-sleeve top, with whatever crazy top you want over it. Only recommendable in winter, though, as having anything up under your armpits means you’ll have to do laundry sooner.

9. One pearl.

Thanks to Celeste, I have a beautiful one, from Kamoka Pearls. As she said when she gave it to me, it’s great travel jewelry. Like everything, sturdy and lightweight, but also a nice touch of bling.

10. Crunchable brimmed hat.

I’m undoing all my don’t-look-like-a-backpacker effort above, but I swear my brain will melt instantly if I don’t wear a hat. Right now, I have a kind of funky plaid one that I got in Thailand, with about a two-inch brim. Before that I had this funny crochet faux-fedora thing.

Do you have your own old-reliable clothing pieces? I’d love to hear them!

Santa Fe Guidebook Giveaway!

Hot off the presses!

We interrupt our Dubai programming to bring you this important announcement: the newest edition of Moon Santa Fe, Taos & Albuquerque has just arrived in stores!

The new edition is packed with little goodies–some great new restaurants in Santa Fe, to start with, and various Albuquerque improvements I picked up while researching the story I wrote for The New York Times last year.

To celebrate, I’m giving away three copies of the book. To enter, just leave a comment, any comment. Entries close Sunday, April 22 at midnight EST. I’ll pick winners by random-number generator, but to make it fun, your comment could be one wacky fact you know about New Mexico.

Fun fact #1: Not many people know this, but New Mexico is part of the United States! Just kidding. Sort of.

Good luck!

Dubai: The Skyline

I had the good fortune of staying in an apartment rented by a Hungarian skyscraper architect, with a view of the Burj Khalifa. Which, I’m sure you’ve heard, is the world’s tallest building. Tom Cruise climbed up the side of it. (My hostess said a friend worked on that production. They paid more than half a million dollars to take 22 windows off the building while they were shooting.) It is glittery and beautiful, and it lends a distinctly Oz-like element to the city.

Did I take a photo of the view? I did not. Meant to. Completely forgot.

This is what it looked like out the other side of the apartment (my bedroom) when I arrived.

It was daytime.

It didn’t clear up for several days, and I drifted around in a sort of apocalyptic fugue state until it did. Ah, here we go:

I'm calling that clear enough.

In the lower left part of that picture, you can see some strange silver things that look like cooling towers. My hostess explained that’s a central cooling plant for all the buildings around that area. Fascinating. Air-conditioning is as essential as oxygen here, I think.

I also failed to get a decent photo of Dubai’s other landmark building, the Burj al-Arab. I remember when it was built, and it looked pretty damn dramatic. Now the city has built up a bit, so that it doesn’t look like some weird space pod in the middle of nothing. Very near it is an attractive mall in a faux-old-bazaar style. I’m not even being ironic–it was attractive. It also happens to be built nearly on the site of the oldest Islamic-era settlement in the Emirates. That’s not irony–that’s just destiny, I guess.

Shamelessly poaching someone else's family-on-holiday snap. Thanks, whoever you were!

Another huge development is the Dubai Marina. I stayed here the last few days of my trip. It’s even walkable. That is, if you really don’t mind walking, especially across 22 lanes of traffic (there’s an overpass–don’t worry!). My first host, the skyscraper architect, had worked on a building in this area.

Dusk in the new city.

If you’re thinking, Wait–that all looks surprisingly tasteful–I thought Dubai was tacky?…well, yeah. The golden hour does wonders. There are also quite a lot of average-height, average-style buildings. There are a lot of token arches stuck on top of tall buildings, I guess to give them a faux-Islamic look. And then there are these arches, stuck on the top of these tall buildings:

Sorry for the bad framing. This from the window of one of those over-22-lanes-of-traffic overpasses.

Can the Chrysler Building sue for copyright infringement? And there are two of them because…? Because why not! That’s Dubai in a nutshell.

Anyhoo, because there are people from all over the world designing buildings here, you get some interesting mash-ups. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with this apartment complex (the lower part, foreground), because those little spires on top are straight out of Asia, but there’s also some kind of Mediterranean vibe:

Someone had a vision.

Dubai, to my surprise when I first went there in 2011, does have a semi-old part of town. You never read about that in the breathless architecture stories. The odd thing about the old-ish parts of any of the Emirati cities is that they’re usually penned in and dubbed a “Heritage Zone” or something like that. The buildings are like zoo animals–the ones that are so depressed they won’t mate, and so will eventually go extinct.

The old fort in Dubai is now a museum. A fairly good museum, in fact, filled with waxworks and assorted dioramas and even taxidermy flamingos. But the sun is setting on all that. Or is that just a shadow cast by all the tall buildings?

The black spots are swallows, not mosquitoes.

Dubai: Ibn Battuta Mall

Following up the runaway success of my post on Terminal 21 in Bangkok, I think I might become a specialist in theme malls. I admit I felt a little thrill at going to the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai not so much because I admire the 14th-century traveler (though I do), but because I was hoping for some really tacky things to take pictures of.

It certainly looked promising. The idea is that the mall’s various sections represent the major places Ibn Battuta traveled: Egypt, India, Persia and China.

Next to the mall is a hotel–that’s the place with the Morocco theme. (Because IB was from Morocco, I guess–so that’s his home base, where he rests his head?)

Louvre-ish pyramids have something to do with the next couple of photos, I think.

The entrance closest to the metro is the Egypt-theme one. Check it:

Actually, seeing how sites in Egypt are managed, I almost did feel like I was there.

But this gave it away.

So I’m sauntering in, thinking it’s gonna be super-cheesy…but this is some kind of crazy educational mall. There are all these displays about medieval Arab mathematicians and their assorted genius inventions.

Er. Except I can't remember what this was for. Astronomical readings of some kind.

"As soon as we're done here, we can all go get some new barrettes at Claire's. So, c'mon, everybody, let's focus."

In the Persia court, there was a touchscreen game to play, involving some surprisingly tricky geography and history questions. I got killed by the Black Death before I could make it to the Far East. Story of my life.

Climb on your donkey, bid farewell to your loved ones and begin your great journey!

One display even explained properly how all these Arab-invented navigational tools, like astrolabes and quadrants, work. I'm used to just seeing them in dusty museums. Here, you could play with them and line them up with fake stars and things. My actual retention of information is poor, but at the time, I certainly thought, “Wow–I finally get it!”

Astrolabes--you can't swing a cat in the Middle East without hitting one.

The coolest thing was this, in the India wing. Even though the explanation panels weren’t working, nor was the device itself. Guess what it is?

OK, I'll tell you: it's a clock.

I didn’t know it was a clock at the time–I only read about Al-Jazari’s elephant clock a couple of days later in a museum. But, still. I love that there’s even a bit of grass in the elephant’s trunk. For authenticity.

And the mall is just remarkably beautiful.

The dome in the Persia wing.

(If that green font is looking kind of familiar…yeah, it’s Starbucks.)

By the time I got to the China wing, I was genuinely agog.

That's a whole Chinese junk in the background.

The funny thing is that, despite all this lavish detail, the mall is just not a very good mall. It doesn’t rate a special air-conditioned tube entrance from the metro, so you have to trudge across the pavement in the heat. And if you look back to see how far you’ve come, you see a whole mass of power plants and smokestacks.

It’s all on one floor–no fancy escalators to take in the view from. And the shops aren’t particularly great–in fact, the whole place smells like vinyl from all the cheap shoe stores. (Not complaining–I got some much-needed new sneakers.) There’s a ‘Marble Slab Creamery’ (the much nicer Mall of the Emirates has a real Cold Stone) and other various not-quite-right businesses, like Borders books. Which I thought shouldn’t exist anymore.

And the clientele is a little more downscale. Which means that, instead of tourists in I’m-on-holiday getups and Emirati ladies in rhinestone-studded abayas, there were lots of people in sort of average clothing from wherever they were from. Which was frankly a bit of a relief after all the other Dubai craziness. And, in some cases, it meant they fit in nicely with the decor.

Which way to the Foot Locker?

Granny carts are an Arab invention too. Didn't you know?

If you’re curious about Ibn Battuta at all (Google did a doodle for his birthday on February 25), do yourself a favor and read Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s books about traveling in his footsteps. The series starts with Travels with a Tangerine, in which TM-S arrives in Dubai and visits this very mall. Hijinks ensue. Truly, it’s great travel writing–hilarious and edifying. You might even be able to buy it at the Borders.

Spring Cleaning and Queens Writers

That's me, chillin' in Astoria. (Actually, Donald Baechler sculpture at the Fisher Landau art center in LIC.)

I’m back in Astoria. Not for long, but for all of April at least. I have a massive stack of notebooks and photos (a digital stack, but a stack nonetheless) from my travels in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar–I’ll put those together into a few posts soon.

Now I’m just enjoying a little minor calm. I was supposed to be jetting off to Lebanon at the end of this week, but when I got back from the UAE, I realized that was utter folly. My brain was totally full, and I was fried. There’s nothing like canceling plans to make you feel like you suddenly have all the time in the world!

This is false, of course. I have to write a book, on a deadline. The deadline’s not till December, but at the rate time is whipping by, I’ll be freaking out soon enough. Actually, I’m doing a little preemptive freaking out, just so I’m in practice when the time comes.

This leads me to point #1 of this post: the return of the Queens Writers Fellowship. After last year, I’ve got a small crew of people who pop in from time to time. But I’d love to have someone in the office for the better part of April. We have lots of space, facilities for lunch, good coffee, etc. Drop me an email and tell me what you’re working on. I’ll be here typity-typing all of April (except for April 5, 6, 20 and 27).

Point #2 of this post: Astoria Ugly is rolling along. It got a mention in the Wall Street Journal recently, because I imagine when you type “astoria new apartment buildings” into Google, the word “ugly” just auto-fills. AsUg, as I’ve started calling it, is more than a year old, and the ugly just keeps coming. It couldn’t have gotten this far without the excellent winter blogsitting of an architect named David, who has since moved to Puerto Rico. I never met him in person. I love the Internet.

Point #3: Queens Love is rolling. I’m contributing, but barely. More than 10 other Queens geniuses are filling it up with images that make my heart swell with borough pride. Queens Writers Fellowship participant Jeff Orlick is the genius who started it. I predict more great things.

Point #4: I have to warn you, there might be a lot more pictures and a bit less text on this blog in months to come. All writing energy is getting channeled elsewhere.

And on that note, back to work.

Egypt #1: Change

By the time you read this, I will be returning from my second of two trips to Egypt. I haven't been there since 2007. I was of course fascinated to see how (or if) things had changed since the revolution.

The changes weren't immediately obvious. Same crowds, same pollution, same bad traffic. Worse traffic, in fact, said taxi drivers, because traffic cops weren't really out in force anymore.

Same hucksters plying Talaat Harb. In fact I got lured into a perfume shop because a guy started talking to me about his experience during the revolution. So adaptable, these guys! Another gambit: "Don't go that way–it's closed for a demonstration!"

The difference, I sensed after a week or so, was something invisible: people seemed relaxed in the streets, excited to be out in public space, not just escaping from their homes. Not always, of course–I witnessed three fistfights in three weeks, which is also something I've never seen before.

I was also finally able to identify a few concrete changes. No more men with giant guns slumped in guard kiosks looking bored. The presence of these guys used to be so common, 'ZabiT' (officer) was one of the first words you learned in Arabic class. In 1992, my friend Karen got a picture of herself posing with some, and captioned it 'Ma huwa? Huwa ZabiT.' (Who is that? That is an officer. Thrilling dialogue.)

And graffiti. Everywhere. Gorgeous and fully formed. Some of it bursting with psychedelic color, some of it in elaborate stencils. The sad panda of the cheese commercials is slumped on walls everywhere: don't say no to regime change.

And then there's simply this, which says it more than anything else I could write.

Near Al-Azhar Mosque and University