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Syria: Tragedy in the Desert

12/27/2014

The news from across the globe this holiday season has been grim, but one of the saddest reports was of the ongoing conflict in Syria. According to the United Nations, some 300 cultural heritage sites in this ancient country have been damaged

Syria was the third country in this part of the world that my wife and I visited and the first that we explored in any depth. Of the seven Middle Eastern countries that my wife and I have visited, we often say that Syria may be our favorite. I’m not an expert on either the Middle East or Syria, but I loved the country and its people, even as I disliked everything I heard and read about the dictator who ruled so ruthlessly.

I remember what a treasure chest that (mostly) desert land proved to be, with ancient and fascinating cities, magnificent archeological sites, and amazing vistas across dry wadis, wooded peaks, and thousand-year old desert caravansaries. I remember our introduction to rich and complex traditions built up over six thousand and more years. I remember the spell of the narrow streets, centuries-old buildings, and massive souks of Aleppo and Damascus, two of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the world.

Crossing the Syrian desert, my wife and I discovered the towering Crusader castle of Crac des Chevaliers; the elegant remains of the palace and city of Palmyra, where Queen Zenobia defied the Roman Empire; 5,000 year old Mari on the Euphrates and its ancient rival Ebla; Maaloula, the village where Aramaic is still spoken; and other sites from Syria’s history as a major crossroads of the ancient world. What a great opportunity, I thought, for travelers who don’t know this part of the world. What surprises and delights wait for them.

Sadly, no more – a least, not for a long time. All of these places have been caught up battles and looted.

I remember walking along narrow city alleys between age-old hammams, mosques, madrasahs, and aged mansions that leaned so far over the cobblestones that the overhanging wooden windows of their upper floors almost touched. I remember the ancient city walls and massive stone gates of Aleppo, the city’s twelfth century Great Mosque, and its honey-colored medieval Citadel. I also remember the giant photographs of the dictator staring down over the squares and streets of Damascus, even the legendary Street Called Straight.

Can battles really have destroyed the historic squares and ancient streets of Aleppo, the city designated in 2006 the Islamic Capital of Culture? Aleppo grew rich because it was at the end of the Silk Road. Its souks were the largest and most splendid in the world – the first malls. Even outside the city, nearby historic sites and villages were declared collectively by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Now, they reportedly are in ruins.

One day, before again exploring the maze of the great Aleppo souk, I sat in one of the open air cafes near the limestone citadel and watched the crowds surging in and out of the arched entrances to the vast souk. A group of boys were playing an energetic game of soccer in the citadel moat. “America!” cried one boy, when he saw us. “We love American people.” Since then, the souk, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has burned to the ground, and the citadel has been badly damaged.

For years, I’ve delighted in the ancient, yet changing, beauty of the Middle East and have appreciated the generosity and warmth of the people in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and the other countries of the area. This is why a large part of my most recent book, DELPHINE, is set in the Middle East and why it’s especially heartbreaking to see these people suffering through such painful, violent times, as their world is wrenched between the forces of the dictator Assad, the Syrian groups trying to overthrow him, and now the Islamic State militants, as well.

It is impossible, of course, to know how this many-sided conflict will end, but I hope that this once beautiful country and its kind and generous people will emerge with dignity and hope intact and be able to rebuild their lives and traditions.

Click HERE to buy DELPHINE

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Exploring the World, One Matchbook at a Time

12/23/2014

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I’ve always been restless, but the year I turned twelve I was desperate to escape my life and discover a bigger, better world. Other people got to fly around the world on airplanes, why couldn’t I?

To compensate, I filled the walls of my bedroom with maps of the world that I drew and colored on great sheets of butcher paper. I have no doubt that I was fantasizing escape as I filled in the outlines of each country with bold colors on those sheets of paper and then penned in the name of each foreign place. Scotland and France, Poland and Turkey, Egypt and Morocco, Pakistan and India. London. Paris and Vienna, Prague and Athens. Every time I penned a name on a map, I felt the magic in that word and the place for which it stood.

A package appeared in our mailbox, one day. My Uncle Douglas, who’d spent his adult life traveling around the world, had sent me his collection of matchbooks he=d picked up from across the globe. During his nearly fifty years, he=d visited every continent except Antarctica, dropping matchbooks into his pockets along the way. And what matchbooks!

These matchbooks were different from the free ones my father got at bars and markets. Often oversized and brightly colored, they advertised fancy restaurants and elegant hotels, cocktail lounges and resorts in Europe, South America, and the Far East. Sometimes, the matches themselves were colored to make pictures so beautiful you=d never want to tear off one to use. A peacock flaunting an open tail. A palm-bordered Spanish hotel. A brown-skinned woman peeking over a raised shoulder. A curving bay protected by the sands of a golden beach.

Worlds beyond my grasp, but not my imagination. It was like a science fiction story: people existing simultaneously on different planes. Time and space were meaningless. Bodies became transparent, passing through each other. Walls couldn=t stop them any more than miles could. How I envied my uncle and his elegant wife for their adventures. Mom was afraid that these souvenirs of distant lands would give me ideas. Of course they did. These visions of exotic locales and the extravagant life they represented lifted me out my boring existence and set me in Raffles= hotel bar and the London Ritz, in the Casino at Monte Carlo and in a Rio nightclub. Why not, I thought, why not?

At this moment, I reminded myself, men in tuxedos and women in long gowns are walking across that terrace, sitting at those tables, gazing on those trees, standing under that sky, eating magnificent food in this restaurant. They=re speaking French and Spanish, sipping cocktails, riding in open convertibles along grand avenues. They=re painting pictures, singing songs, acting in famous theaters. They=re growing coffee beans and silk worms, building skyscrapers, sailing on luxury liners. Beneath those leaning palms and arched arcades, people who are not me are happy.

If I couldn=t live on the world stage, at least not yet, I could collect objects that let me escape, at least in my mind, to someplace else. Coins and stamps from other countries, rocks and stones and seashells and pieces of coral from far off peaks and shores. The square box of my bedroom was crowded with symbols of liberation. Freedom.

            Eventually, I married and began traveling. Of course, I began slipping matchbooks into my pocket from time to time. The matchbooks that I found and saved, although colorful and evocative of exotic and fascinating places, seldom were as extravagant as the ones my uncle had passed on to me. Nevertheless, I persisted as the years went by, and filled my pockets and eventually a drawer at home with matches from hotels in India, Peru, Iran, Cuba, Portugal, England, and other countries that my wife and I visited and explored.

            Some of these matchbooks and boxes became battered or were lost as the years chugged along, but I still have most of them. I enjoy pawing through them. It’s as if the United Nations has flowed into that drawer, reminding me that although each country is unique, they also have a lot in common. All of them were exciting, interesting places to be. And I know that I’ll slide many more colorful reminders of this ever-various, constantly changing world into my pockets.

Bruce Douglas Reeves, author of DELPHINE. Click HERE

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Family and the Holidays

12/19/2014

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Jessie and Daisy

Family is important during the holidays, at least that’s what we’re told, and of course it is. This is the time that brings people together—if we have people with whom to get together. Or that we even want to be together with. The sad truth is that many people are alone and all families are not like those old Norman Rockwell covers of three generations grinning like jack-o-lanterns around a glossy turkey.

My family is huge, but I’ve lost touch with most of them. They’re interesting, though. Go back far enough, I discovered, you come up against some pretty tough folks. One of my great-great grandmothers pulled a wooden handcart across the plains and desert to a corner of the west that became Utah. These Mormon ancestors of mine were strong because they had to be. When they settled down, even in this desolate place, they stuck. When I was a boy, this farming community in central Utah felt the end of the earth. The town, really a village, was settled in 1851. Nearly a dozen of my mother’s surviving aunts and uncles still lived in the area when my parents and I visited, most of them still farmers. A few of the siblings, including my grandmother, had escaped.

The clan began by chance as the nineteenth century was muddling its ungainly way toward the new century. When my great grandparents finally reached this part of what had been called the Promised Land, they had nothing but grit and determination to help them survive. Jessie and Daisy, my great grandparents, didn’t even know each other when Fate threw them together.

Picture this: a deeply rutted dirt trail, and here comes Jessie, a tall, raw-boned man, sunburned and skinny, with a baby but no woman, ready to settle down on land that he intended to farm. And here comes a family, husband and wife and several kids, all of them hungry and dirty and exhausted from weeks of travel. For them, this so-called Promised Land, the end of a trip that started months earlier in England, wasn’t living up to that promise.

Jessie eyed the travelers, they stared back at him. The kids and women hung back, while the two men talked. Jessie explained his situation: he had a bit of land, what could pass for a house, and was ready to start tilling the soil and raising animals, but his wife had gone and died on him, leaving the kid. He couldn’t take care of the thing and get a farm going at the same time. He needed a woman, a wife.

The other man understood exactly what Jessie needed. He looked back at his disheveled, weary family, and motioned for one of the girls to come forward.

“Here,” he said, “take Daisy.”

The girl was fifteen and strong, although not much to look at, but it was possible that she’d clean up okay. She’d grown up taking care of her brothers and sisters and knew all about caring for babies. Most important, it’d be one less mouth to feed, if Jessie took her off his hands.

A deal was struck and the two parties went their separate ways. Daisy and Jessie were married in the Latter Day Saint church and produced their own dozen children, most of whom survived. Those kids, in turn, married and created families, and so it went, generation after generation. A few of the offspring wandered away from the little community for various reasons -- the Great Depression, World War Two, restlessness, ambition – but most stayed within spitting distance, as folks there said, of where Jessie and Daisy were first thrust together by Fate.

I never knew Jessie and Daisy, although I’ve seen snapshots of them in old age. My mother always said that the old lady was grumpy and mean. Maybe so, but I don’t think Daisy had an easy time of it for the eighty or so years she endured life in the Promised Land.

My parents and I often stayed with my Uncle Sam, who looked a lot like Jessie, judging from blurry brown photos I’ve seen of the old man, and like his pa he produced a big family to help on the farm. Other times, we stayed with my Uncle Ren, who managed to build a big basement on which his farm house someday was supposed to stand, but he never could get together the cash to do that, so his family just lived in that basement, fixed up with rooms and electricity and plumbing.

These folks were pretty much like folks in rural communities all over America, I imagine. Many of them were farmers, but some, like another uncle of mine, took to repairing trucks and tractors and cars, while others found jobs in the little towns nearby. They may not be sophisticated, but they know what they know and don’t need to know anything else. And come the holidays they get together, cook up a feast, gather round, red-faced and, as happy as they’re able to be, celebrate whatever there is to celebrate.

Click HERE to go to Books Page

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Christmas and My Father's Shoebox

12/15/2014

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As we move into the holiday season, memories of past years dance in our heads, for the most part good ones, although others may be lurking. I remember my young daughter feeding a holiday cookie to her grandpa, mellow and full of love that Christmas day. However, when my sister and I were kids, it was hard for him to feel mellow at Christmas.

I remember my father sitting at our oilcloth-covered kitchen table with a shoebox in which he kept the bills. Every week, he worked through that box, deciding which bill to pay, which he could ignore, which needed something on account. There was no way he’d pay all of them, or even keep all the creditors happy, and the struggle grew worse as Christmas approached.

Five days a week, before I was out of bed, he drove off in his old Plymouth coupe, on his way to work. Boring, filthy work. Work that battered his body, scarred his hands, and left him exhausted. Work that he’d done for decades, in one city or another. Work that could drive a guy nuts. Maybe, I sometimes thought, listening to him racing the engine before he roared down the street, it was driving him nuts.

I remember the year my Mom was hoping for television set for Christmas. We were the only family in our neighborhood who didn’t have a television, but a TV set didn’t fit into that shoebox. A new television that I admired in a store window cost $371. Fifteen bucks fed the four of us for a week. This was before credit cards, but most folks bought their TVs on time. Dad refused to get into debt more than he was.

“Why should I pay two weeks salary,” he demanded, “so you can watch some idiot named Red Buttons dance a jig and make stupid noises?”

Dwight Eisenhower was president, then, and his Secretary of Defense, Charles Wilson, the former CEO of General Motors, had stated, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” Except that maybe it wasn’t. Corporations were making out like bandits during those years, but people like my Dad were still having a tough time. We never owned a house, never had a new car, never could be sure that the shoebox of bills wouldn’t explode in my father’s scarred face.

It was clear to me that we weren’t going to get a TV that year, and I didn’t expect a bike, which was the only other thing I wanted, so Christmas didn’t mean a heck of a lot to me. Christmas Eve, I got up to go to the toilet and caught my father in his thermal underwear crouching by the little Christmas tree, putting together a prefab stamped-tin doll house, its Sears box beside him.

“Going to the bathroom,” I said.

“Well go ahead, then get back to bed before you wake your sister.”

I was glad that she was getting a doll house, but it made me feel even worse. That doll house wasn’t nearly as expensive as either a bike or a TV.

But the next morning, a red bicycle stood in front of the Christmas tree, beside the doll house. Closer inspection revealed that the bike was secondhand, a coat of scarlet paint not quite covering its original blue paint, but that didn’t matter to me. He always did the best he could – and sometimes worked wonders with that shoebox. Maybe he couldn’t pull a tiger out of it, but from time to time he managed a rabbit or two. And eventually he did find a television there.

Click HERE to go to Books Page

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IRAN: Traveling to Learn, Not Judge

12/11/2014

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Few people from the West visit Iran these days, but a few years ago my wife and I were part of a small group that was warmly welcomed there. Even though women entering the country had to be covered in either a long coat called a manteau, plus head scarf, or a chador from top of head to foot, they felt that the experience was worth the nuisance.

I was reminded of that trip when I read Rick Steves’ fascinating and important book Travel as a Political Act. One chapter in it describes his own recent trip to Iran. Often, when my wife and I travel to countries in the Middle East and beyond, we’re asked why? Aren’t we afraid? Rick Steves has the perfect answer to that question: “I learned,” he wrote, “that fear is for people who don’t get out much. The flipside of fear is understanding—and we gain understanding through travel.”

One place in Tehran that no one can miss is the State Jewels Museum – a vivid introduction to the life style of the late shah and Pahlavi family. The jewel collection of the deposed shah and his fun-loving relatives fills many steel-walled rooms in a bank basement. The spectacle is beyond impressive. The sad fact, of course, was that all this over-the-top magnificence came out of the flesh and blood of the Iranian people. As we trudged past the huge glass cases, we couldn’t help thinking, “No wonder the revolution overthrew the shah.”

The archeology museum was more interesting, since history here reaches back to the beginnings of civilization. As we wandered among massive Persian statues, bronzes from Luristan, and carvings from Susa and Persepolis, groups of students rushed up, chattering excitedly. The high school girls, clad like nuns in black manteaus (often with blue jeans peaking out underneath) were always the most eager. In fact, all across Iran, clusters of school girls and sometimes male students, smiled, practiced their English, and eagerly welcomed their country’s foreign guests.

The museum guide pointed out that it once held considerably more treasures, but many were smuggled out by the Pahlavi rulers before they fled the country. “Our national heritage,” he said, still indignant years later, “stolen by the shah and his family and now in private collections and museums around the world!”

American visitors often are driven past the huge walled complex of the former United States Embassy in Tehran. The grounds are overgrown and the buildings, glimpsed over the walls, are crumbling. What about the student occupation of the embassy and the Americans held hostage? Being there gave us a chance to view events through the eyes of the Iranians.

Iranians feel that the stage was set years before. Mohammed Mosaddegh, democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran in 1951, was overthrown in 1953 by a coup d’etat labeled Operation Ajax, orchestrated by the British MI5 and the United States CIA, under Director Alan Dulles, brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Why? Because, we were told, Mosadegh had nationalized the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913.

Richard Nixon, when he was Eisenhower’s vice president, visited Tehran in December 1953, only four months after Operation Ajax, befriending the just-installed Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, which infuriated Iranian students. When Nixon was given an honorary degree at Tehran University, students staged a massive demonstration. The shah ordered his troops to open fire. Three students were killed, many wounded, several hundred arrested. This caused such resentment in the country that the day has been remembered ever since as “Student Day.”

Their anger was flamed by the shah’s lavish lifestyle amid the wretched living conditions throughout the country. In October, 1971, in a multi-day extravaganza at ancient Persepolis, said to cost as much as $200 million.

“And in the towns around Persepolis,” we were told, “people were dying from polluted drinking water.”

In May 1972, Nixon returned to Iran, promising the shah that the U.S. would sell him weapons. The large protests during his visit showed how much the resistance to the shah’s regime was growing. By the fall of 1978, it was clear that he couldn’t survive and in January 1979, he fled. In November that year, a student demonstration outside the embassy against U.S. policies provoked U.S. Marines to shoot in the air, probably hoping to disperse the students. Instead, they climbed the compound wall and broke into the embassy. The guards shot and injured a number of students and embassy staff began shredding documents.

“The students discovered those shredded documents and pieced them together.”

From the patched-together documents, we were told, they discovered that the CIA and British MI5 were encouraging anti-Islamic revolution activities. The reaction around Iran was shock and anger. Ayatollah Khomenei declared “These are not diplomats with diplomatic privileges and rights, but CIA agents working against our government.” Women and staff with no authority for policy were released, but 52 were held as CIA agents and spies supposedly working against the Iranian government.

In the United States, we’ve received one version of those events. It was eye-opening to discover a different view of what happened then. In his book, Rick Steves quotes Mark Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

We had preconceptions about the people of Iran, but they had their own ideas about us, too. Everywhere, people stared openly at us, not with hostility but with surprise and curiosity. At one shrine, a group of boys followed us, trying out their few words of English. A boy about ten showed me his English class workbook. Proudly turning the pages, he pointed to where he had filled in the blanks in the various lessons.

Later, walking through the gardens, fifteen or twenty boys came up, one of them pulling out his notebook and ballpoint pen, and making writing motions. I printed, “Hello from the U.S.A,” and signed it. He read it, grinning broadly. Crowds of children waved as we left, calling, “Goodbye! Goodbye, friends!”

Click HERE to go to the BOOKS page

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Sexism: With and Without a Veil

12/6/2014

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“How could you stand it?” friends have asked my wife.

“Didn’t it make you furious?”

They’re asking about when we traveled in the Middle East. Sometimes, it’s about when she had to cover up in Iran, other times about sexist men she encountered in places like Morocco and Egypt. Often, they’re outraged by apparently limited opportunities for women in certain countries. Everyone has an opinion.

Sure, we were indignant, even outraged, sometimes, but we came to understand these traditions, even if we didn’t agree with them. We also discovered that situations often aren’t what they seem at first. These rules aren’t just about controlling women.

We learned that people often cling to habits and customs from generations or centuries before. In the U.S., we lived in wide open spaces with wild animals and often hostile neighbors, so we still like to sprawl, think nothing of driving for hours, and love our guns – whether these habits make sense now, or not. In the Middle East, people roamed with their animals and clans and often were isolated and vulnerable to attack by marauders or other tribes, so they hid their prized possessions, including women who might be abducted. Despite the centuries since these customs originated, many men there still tend to think of women as possessions to be both cherished and protected.

By contrast, here in the United States, judging from recent events and news, women are neither cherished nor protected. Maybe they don't want to be, but it is considered among some American men, especially it seems in the military and high schools and colleges, to be okay to harass and even physically attack any females who happen to be around—and then to blame them for being enticing.

In the Middle East of the past, traditions and customs provided rules to live by in a dangerous world. At the same time, rules of hospitality emerged because being provided with shelter and nourishment after a long journey could be a matter of life and death. These traditions still linger in the Middle East.

Maneuvering through a village souk in Lebanon, we found tiny shops selling veils, scarves, and coverings for women – while passing young women in tee shirts and jeans, older women in loose black clothing, and everything in between. In a hotel in Beirut, we watched a photographer take wedding pictures of a bride wearing a stylish wedding dress with bare shoulders, her husband-to-be holding her naked arm. Women in Lebanon run businesses, earn college degrees, and are professionals with careers – and do all this dressed either conservatively or in western clothes, as they choose.

In Iran, more than 50 percent of the university graduates are women, at least half of the doctors are women, and women hold professional jobs in many fields. They do this while dressed in hijab: a long coat known a manteau and loose pants with a headscarf or even the traditional chador from head to ankle. In the U.S., women still struggle to rise in many fields and to get equal pay.

For decades, in Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern countries, women could choose between traditional or western dress and were free to pursue the careers they wanted. Recently, reacting to growing poverty, political unrest, and increasingly extreme western attitudes, a tug-of-war between traditional and western ways has emerged in these countries. It seems impossible to predict what the outcome will be, although many young people in the Middle East want the freedoms of the west. However, there doesn’t seem to be the epidemic of harassment and rape that we see in the U.S. Until we solve our own problems, should we point fingers at other countries?

Click HERE to go to Books page

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Lands of Sand and Sorrow

12/3/2014

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More than twenty years ago, I fell in love with the countries that we in the West label the Middle East. Even as I write that, I’m reminded that the very term “Middle East” is very West-centric and conveys an attitude. Middle as opposed to what? “Far East?” Far from where? From Europe and America? Are these the basis for all geographic and cultural definitions? Point of view matters, although that’s often forgotten as we trot out the familiar phrases and words.

After that first visit (to Syria and Jordan), I was hooked on this part of the world. Curiosity developed into fascination, affection, and a desire to discover and learn more, much more. The austere beauty of those ancient countries captivated us, but it was the people who especially charmed me. Their warmth and welcoming spirit and the richness and complexity of their traditions intrigued me. The feeling of antiquity, of the millennia that had come and gone beneath my feet, was exciting and sobering. Civilizations, empires, emerged, grew rich and powerful, then faded and vanished, yet their influence endures to this day.

The streets and markets of Damascus and Aleppo, the back alleys of Cairo, the boulevards of Beirut, the golden hues of ancient Palmyra, the complexity of the medinas of Marrakesh and Fez, the glorious tiled mosques of Isfahan, the remains of medieval caravansaries crumbling along the Silk Road: all of this hypnotized me. Then, as I explored more and learned more, I came to appreciate more deeply the protective traditions passed down over thousands of years. Many people today value and carry on the old ways, whether it’s the Bedouins still herding their sheep across the dry landscape, the backstreet craftsmen hammering out silver and gold, the bakers producing loaves of flatbread in scorching brick ovens, or people opening up their homes and offering mint tea or strong coffee and tasty mezze as their ancestors did long ago.

We also heard about the difficulty young men are having finding jobs so they can marry and have families. This is not just a picturesque ancient land, but a land trying to cope with the realities of the modern world—a land looking for solutions that will give its people dignity and hope. These problems wear a variety of faces, but persist from Iran to Palestine, from Morocco to Turkey, from Egypt to Syria and Lebanon. The consequences also might seem superficially varied, but maybe aren’t so different. People everywhere grab at whatever offers them hope for the future.

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      I've been writing at least since age seven, making up stories before that, and exploring the world almost as long as I can remember. This blog is mostly about writing and traveling -- for me the perfect life.
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      My most recent book is DELPHINE, winner of the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize. Recently, my first novel, THE NIGHT ACTION, has been republished by Automat Press as an e-book, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sources.  CLICK here to buy THE NIGHT ACTION e-book.

Syria: Tragedy in the Desert

Exploring the World, One Matchbook at a Time

Family and the Holidays

Christmas and My Father's Shoebox

IRAN: Traveling to Learn, Not Judge

Sexism: With and Without a Veil

Lands of Sand and Sorrow

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