Destination: Middle East
Travels With Daisy
by Jim Benning | 05.09.02 | 10:22 PM ET
After she was famously kidnapped and released by the Taliban last fall, journalist Yvonne Ridley was accused of being a “bad mother” to her nine-year-old daughter, Daisy. The experience rattled Ridley. She re-examined their relationship and realized she didn’t even know Daisy’s favorite color. So she decided to take Daisy traveling. “We basked on Bondi Beach, shivered in an air-conditioned Dubai taxi, got drenched in torrential rain in Afghanistan and sweated in the stifling heat of Lahore,” Ridley writes in the Observer. “We had an amazing time together but, more importantly, I have emerged from a wonderful bonding experience with a child I am very proud to call my daughter.”
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Yahoo! BuzzAbandoning Petra
by Michael Yessis | 05.03.02 | 10:43 PM ET
For hundreds of years, Petra was virtually off limits to non-Arab travelers. Then, after Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, the fabled red sandstone ruins became a mandatory stop for backpackers and tour-bus travelers from all corners of the globe. Now, because of events in the Middle East and elsewhere, Petra is a ghost town. In a recent piece for The New York Times, Neil MacFarquhar traces the history of tourism at Jordan’s best-known attraction and takes a look at the repercussions of area strife. “In the years right after the peace treaty, 500 Israelis a day on average entered Petra,” he writes. “There have been just 15 in the last five months, according to Suleiman Farajat, the director of the recently created Petra Archaeological Park. The men working amid the ruins prefer it that way.”
Japanese Tourists Stumble into Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
by Jim Benning | 04.18.02 | 7:31 PM ET
It sounds like a spoof news story from The Onion, but this is legit: A pair of Japanese backpackers touring Bethlehem were so engrossed in their guidebooks they wandered right up to the Church of the Nativity, only to be shocked to learn it was the site of an ongoing seige between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen.
Hezbollah Meets Dollywood
by Michael Yessis | 10.16.01 | 8:52 PM ET
In May 2000 the South Lebanese Army, Israel’s proxy, withdrew from the notorious Khiam prison. The new guardians, Hezbollah, liberated the prisoners and turned the facility into a museum. Recently, Negar Akhavi traveled the 100 miles south from Beirut to visit what he calls “Hezbollahland,” a discomforting mix of Islamic fundamentalist propaganda and kitschy souvenirs. “After 45 minutes or so we…headed for the Hezbollah gift shop - a must for any visitor,” he writes in an essay for Slate. “It was a long, narrow room, stocked with two wide aisles of Hezbollah keepsakes. They had yellow Hezbollah flags in every size and Hezbollah clothing—T-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps. Along one wall were display cases of various stickers, posters, lapel pins, and key chains, and pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini, spiritual leader Musa al-Sadr, and the current Hezbollah secretary-general, Nasrallah. A few photos even caught these men cutting loose with smiles.”
Islam’s Bloody Celebration
by Rolf Potts | 10.03.01 | 12:59 AM ET
At the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice in Jordan, Rolf Potts unearths the quirky, intimate face of an Islamic world you won't find on the news
Anthem Soul
by Rolf Potts | 07.06.01 | 1:00 AM ET
James Brown tunes seep through walls in a Syrian hotel. Rolf Potts listens in and finds new meaning in "Sex Machine."
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