Thomas journals

One of the lightning rods of dissent in the Kingdom is the government's refusal to permit women to drive. We know of no other nation with this ban; and to compound the confusion, there is apparently no explicit law banning it, just a reference to a decree in 1991. Like the other irritating restriction of the niqab veil, it also has no basis in the Koran, and therefore is not easily upheld in Sharia law. Recently the first name "Manal" has become a symbolic name, as the divorced Aramco IT expert -- she received awards for her expertise a few years ago -- drove a car near Coleman's high school last month and published the feat on YouTube. The deliberately banal video inflamed the sensibilities of the Saudi police, who detained Manal in the women's reformatory for 10 days. Her lawyer carefully pointed out that there was no law against her driving, and further she carefully avoided any reference to the Facebook group urging women to all drive on June 17th. St...

The Saudi government recently announced new regulations on Media coverage -- criticism of official religious figures is forbidden.  We suppose this applies to criticism from any direction -- from those who say the official imam is too liberal, and from those who criticize the official stance as too conservative.   However, our American bias toward openness is uncomfortable with such a directive, and we worry about the consequences of stifling debate.   There are several dimensions to such debates here:  regarding basic interpretations of Islam, regarding attitudes toward different Islamic sects, regarding women's role in society, and the very role of religion in society, all particularly complicated when the society is clearly established as an Islamic state (they finesse the point of what sort of sectarian state it is, claiming simple hegemony over the holy sites:  we are constantly reminded that the King's primary title is Custodian of the Two Holy M...

Click on this link to our photo album , with captions, to review at your leisure. Or view this slideshow

Zahle morning walk until a taxi comes along to take us 10km south to Ksara Winery, a well-kept beautiful operation where several staff are waiting to show tourists through the real limestone caves where the wine is aged. Then a sparkling new tasting room -- all good-tasting wine (but maybe my tastebuds are out of practice) and gift shoppe. We walk a few minutes out to the main highway and rapidly flag down a shared "service" minivan. We realize that our earlier ride to Baalbek on a nice new minivan was an anomaly -- this one is a smoky rattletrap (the smoke emanated mostly from the driver and passengers) that careened down the mountain, regularly squealing to a stop in hopes of gathering new paying passengers. At one point the driver held on to a lady's package in order to keep her from getting out of the van to take a competitor's ride. Although he tried to get us to pay double for a ride directly to our hotel, he dropped us at the Kuwaiti embassy where we got ...

Wandering through the ruins at Baalbek is humbling -- again, like Byblos, there is a great mixture of modern educational museum exhibits and unhindered space for rambling through the temples and broken stairways.   We got a few photos of Coleman's dancing shoes, to add to his global collection (he carried this pair of shoes carefully through our trip, only wore them for this special purpose) -- I will add them to the blog entry later, as my phone ran out of battery soon thereafter.  The sun peeked through the clouds for a bit, yet it was quite chilly and windy, cutting through our thin jackets.  But we were duly impressed with the size of the temples and temple stones, and the elaborate carving of the stairways there -- it's quite easy to imagine how impressed a crowd would have been two thousand years ago.  We also enjoyed reading the various interpretations of the buildings' origins, that varied according to the origin of the archaeologists themselves. Afte...

Baalbek ruins are stunning monuments to architectural genius two thousand years ago, and organizational effort so far inland -- the granite pillars originated in Aswan, Egypt: just imagine the effort to transport them inland.  Our Hotel Shouman room has a tiny balcony viewing the entrance to the ruined temples, right next to the shrine to Barbara...yes, Saint Barbara who was martyred for her determined conversion to Christianity; she supposedly mocked the pagan temple at Baalbek and was martyred here.  That's the story. I am frankly amazed that so much of the ruins remain -- the various conquerors helped themselves to the pre-cut stones to build their own forts and houses, yet much of it remains.  Admittedly, archaeologists have rebuilt portions over the last hundred years, since Kaiser Wilhelm visited here in 1898.  But Coleman and I enjoyed also wandering the old souk, with its narrow alleyways and aromatic bags of spices, and hanging carcasses of sheep and cow ...

Saturday in the Monnot area, Beirut is hopping with fancy sports cars and heavily-muscled guys in boots and t-shirts guarding doors and parking places....and the Theatre Monnot nearby hosts a contemporary dance performance, with families and (mostly) daughters filling the theater.  The pieces were surprisingly lengthy and well-done: first a new piece, entitled "L'Etreinte" (the embrace), a classic romantic piece about man and woman flirting then embracing, arguing, embracing.  Especially impressive was the strength of both dancers, as each at some point carried and twirled the other around.  Then an older piece entitled Beyrouth O Beyrouth -- this one had a few spoken words, with 5 dancers, variously individual or grouped, enacting the civil war via the metaphor of 5 people in one apartment.  Both pieces were memorable.  We filed out of the auditorium at 10pm, negotiated a taxi ride home (the taxis nearby were clearly cruising for night-clubbers, charging high ...