Back in the Kabubble
I watched some movie or other five years ago that was about a journalist that ws covering the war in Afghanistan. It seems that it is always the case that journalists in war zones hang out at the same western hotels where they commune with one another and both check notes with one another and stay connected to a world they can recognize rather than the one that’s going on around them. That was happening in Kabul at the time and those correspondents would come and go from Kabul and recognized the insular and strangely comfortable feeling of being back together is a foreign and yet familiar place together. They would say that they were all back in the Kabubble. The expression always stuck with me even though I have long since forgotten the movie and even the actors. It resonates with me because when I return to a place that feels foreign and yet familiar, I feel like I too am back in some form of Kabubble.
Tonight we arrived in Cairo. Now I haven’t been in Cairo for fifty years, so I don’t really find it particularly familiar the way I do Rome, but for some strange reason, Cairo just feels like the Middle East to me. I don’t want to be culturally insensitive and suggest that the Middle East is all the same, by any means, but there is a certain feeling of familiarity to me in being in the region altogether. Istanbul, where I have been several times in the past few years is very exotic and and is almost as equally Muslim as Cairo, but it feels very different. Yes, some of the mosques look the same, but the overall feel of the city is somehow different. Istanbul is where East meets West and that blend simply seems different. I would also say that Morocco (whether Casablanca or Marrakech) are equally exotic, Muslim and yet very different for some reason, the presence of camels notwithstanding. The same is true of Jerusalem (obviously except for the Muslim dominance, but traditional Jewish and traditional Muslim have never felt all that different to me). But Cairo is the Arab world, as much as that notion is more a westernized fabrication than a tribal homogenization. It is somewhat easy for me to see why westerners have wanted to lump the Arab world into one grouping, the desert culture of the region simply feels very much alike to us.
They say the sounds and smells of being in India are very recognizable, and I get that. I’ve experienced it only once, but I completely get it. When I was in Pakistan just a few years ago it felt more like being in the Middle East than being in India even though we all know that the Punjab was divided by the British to accommodate their ease of exit from the subcontinent such that the Muslim and Hindu populations would be in relatively less direct strife. Well, I will say that the sounds and smells of the Arab world have an equally recognizable aspect to them to me and that jumped at me as we arrived at Cairo airport and got in our van to the Marriott Mena Hotel neat Giza.
I told Mike and Melisa as we made our way through heavy traffic across town that this sort of airport to hotel run was the same the world over whether you were in urban Latin America, Asia, Africa or the Middle East. That seemed especially so in the waning light of dusk. And that felt especially so from the confines of the cab, given the chaotic and laneless way that the busy traffic proceeded through the cheaply constructed roadside structures with electrical wiring in evidence everywhere and people standing around waiting for some form of public transportation at the roadside. But that feeling changed when we got to the hotel. It was nighttime by then and the landscape lighting of the expansive palm-treed and fountained entry to the hotel could have had us at the Phoenecian in Phoenix or the Venetian in Las Vegas. But then we went to dinner in the hotel restaurant and it all came rushing back to me. When you travel on business in the region (probably so in any region), your time is spent in mostly several places. There are the airports, the highways, the hotels and the offices. Anything beyond that is intentional recreation. Hotels and their restaurants are big part of the experience and they become very familiar place in the Kabubble of travel. If I close my eyes I can envision every single breakfast buffet, with its array of fresh fruits and pastries, that I have ever stayed at. They blend into one big buffet in my mind with gracious tip-seeking waiters and clean crisp linens.
T.E. Lawrence famously said that he liked the desert because it was “clean”, That is the same cleanliness that one feels in the hotel restaurants of the Middle East. While Mike ordered a Caesar Salad, Melisa got chicken soup for her soul and Kim went with the club sandwich, for some reason I was drawn to the Egyptian menu. I like my comfort food as much as anyone and I am usually quite careful in foreign climes to stay closer to a western food selection, but there I was, gravitating to a local dish of chicken, locally spiced rice and tabuli sauce. Its a wonder that I did not start eating it with my hands like I was in a Bedouin tent or something. It tasted wonderful to me. All the travel annoyances of the day and the fatigue of the moment immediately evaporated and I was transported back into my familiar Middle Eastern Kabubble.
I was sure to share my find with Mike, Melisa and Kim and I somehow think that my enthusiasm for the local cuisine impressed them since they know me well enough to know that this non-foodie does not gush over a meal very often. Food is a strong mnemonic. When in Rome, a good rosetta roll, Roman salami, buffalo mozzarella, rosemary roasted potatoes or balsamic glaze can send me into a trance that takes me back to high school. I get that. But for some reason, that chicken, rice and tabuli did the same thing to me and in my mind, I was Lawrence, twirling in my Bedouin robes, thumbing my nose at the rigors of the British khaki uniformity of life. It did an amazing job of welcoming me to Cairo in a way that I could not have anticipated.
Tomorrow morning we start our antiquities tour by going to both the great pyramids at Giza and then to Saqqara, the even more ancient tombs and step-pyramids that predate Giza. We are at the edge of the desert here, as we will be all week as we go down the Nile. The lushness of the riverside contrasts rather starkly with the immediacy of the surrounding desert that seems to go on forever. In truth, it does go on forever because for any early man who wandered west from here, he would not get far enough to survive since the expanse of desert barely ends or is interrupted until you get to the Moroccan Berber coastline thousands of miles away. The inhospitability of the desert compared to the verdant oasis provided by the river delta is one of the amazing wonders of the ancient world in my view.
But now that I know there is tabuli and grilled chicken back at the hotel should I need to retreat to the Kabubble, I will venture forth into the the deep past and imagine what Kabubbles the ancients found along their paths.