Zionist German Architecture

Israel was perhaps one of the greatest social experiments of modern history, and in a certainly limited sense is one of its greatest successes. The creation of a modern nation state out of nothing more than an ethnic and religious group was certainly a stunningly bold, humanist undertaking. It’s fitting, then that after a location was chosen and a language refined, when the time came to build a city, its architects looked to that most modern of styles for their inspiration: the Bauhaus.

A brief-lived movement that grew out of the troubled and ultimately misplaced optimism of Weimar Germany, the Bauhaus was a state-sponsored architecture and design collective. I’m no expert, but the Bauhaus output of the 1920’s and beyond stands in start contrast to the modernism of fin-de-siecle Europe, which manifested itself in the warm Art Nouveau styles of eras before the wars. The Bauhaus rejected ornamentation in favour of simplicity, and details in favour of efficiency. Perhaps most of all, they rejected the elitism and expense of all forms of high design at the time in favour of something which could be reliably and effectively reproduced – they were, perhaps, the inventors of Pop Art.

Ideologically, this was all very much in line with what the inter-war Zionists had in mind for Israel; a egalitarian utopia which turned its back on a more complicated European past and had both feet firmly in an elegant, simple future. The fact that architectural style also promised to be cheap to manufacture certainly didn’t hurt. So when a great number of the Jewish members of the Bauhaus school were chased out of Germany in the early 1930’s, the new city of Tel Aviv, rapidly rising out of the sand dunes to the north of the old port of Jaffa welcomed them with both arms… and quickly put them to work, drawing their own plans and training the new crop of Zionist builders.

I have made a good number of trips to Tel Aviv over the years, and I never really recalled the city has having particularly notable architecture. I mostly thought of the dusty streets of low-rise concrete buildings as being more or less undistinguishable from the countless other cities built after the Second World War around the globe. But as you move closer in to the heart of Tel Aviv, if you gaze up through the leafy trees that line the streets, and can peer behind the sheets of peeling plaster, it becomes not hard to make out a gentle curve of a buildings corner, or the stark cropped edge of a long balcony: the trademarks of the Bauhaus.

As you move down such a street, it becomes almost breathtaking – building after building repeats the same motifs, artfully simplified construction of apartment blocks stripped down to their essence. One can imagine sea-air ventilated rooms full of happy young Zionist architects, men and women side by side in khaki shirt-sleeves, slumped over drafting tables sketching away under a portrait of Walter Gropius with a banner that reads “form follows function!” After work they might have gathered in the still-fresh city square of the “White City” they were about to create until one or another of them produced a clarinet and then they would dance the hora until the small hours.

I suppose in the uncertain, war torn years that followed independence, as the idealism gave way to modernism of a different sort and middle class moved out of Tel Aviv and into the many suburbs filled with driveways, washing machines and the like which now fill the coastal plain. Tel Aviv remained a commercial center, a home for the banks, the ministries, and whoever else could not easily move. The apartment blocks, built in a fit of communal optimism, passed into the tied hands of landlords bound by rent-control laws who had little choice but to let the buildings pass into disrepair. Plaster peeled, gardens were paved over, and the airy iconic balconies were closed in with all manners of slatted blinds and iron railings and worse to protect against the Mediterranean sun, the salt air, and the sceptre of crime that haunts every city of the sort Tel Aviv was becoming. It’s that Tel Aviv that I remember as a boy; a place with pleasant weather but awful construction. A part of Israel fun for an outing, but giving no reason to linger more.

Today, it appears things have changed. In the early part of this decade, the center of the city was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Simultaneously, Tel Aviv began to succumb to the wave of urban renewals which was, and still is, sweeping the world. Our generation is rushing back into the cities our parents and grandparents abandoned, seeking the very sort of human contact and unpredictability they sought to avoid. So among the old septuagenarians taking the air, one can see in Tel Aviv many a yuppie walking their (miniature) dog or raising a pair of designer sunglasses to asses a particularly attractive view. The restaurant and café scene in the very core of the heritage architecture districts (Avenue Rothschild, and Dizengoff) is truly world class, and shows signs of getting better (see my forthcoming blog post on the dining scene). I think it’s exactly what our smiling, singing architects had in mind.

The Best Hotel in Eilat is in Jordan

Israel, though commonly thought of as a Mediterranean country, has a small outlet in its far south onto the Red Sea as well, connecting it to the trade and fair weather of the oceans of the southern hemisphere. Despite being constricted for space, wedged as it is into the tip of Israel’s southern triangle, it does dual duty as a major port and as a major tourist destination. It’s actually most interesting for its proximity to Aqaba, a sister city which serves the same role for Jordan, in plain view across the water.

A co-worker and I made the four-hour drive down from Tel Aviv, through the formidable Negev desert which makes up the most of southern Israel. It’s a stunning landscape of red rocks and jagged hills, a more hostile version of New Mexico. It’s unwelcoming character is somewhat underlined by the skull-and-crossbones signs that line the roadway, reminding drivers that beyond BOTH sides of the road lie live-fire military training zones. When the well-maintained two-lane highway meets the Red Sea, the surrounding scenery doesn’t subside, rather the small hills grow into brown mountains that loom over a narrow passage to the water, where lie the ports and hotels.

The tourist industry doesn’t mind the lack of space, rather it seems to thrive on it. It’s impossible to explain the experience of an Israeli tourist hotel to someone who has not been. It’s a thoroughly democratic affair, with packs of extended families making the trip with a full retinue of offspring in tow, content to do nothing more than sit about all day and night, chatting loudly and eating, moving only to go from restaurant to lobby to pool and back to restaurant, with children in constant orbit. These being Israelis, brought up on the virtues of communalism, there is no need nor desire for space. It can be delightfully informal, if you don’t have to stay long.

We stayed in the “best” hotel in Eilat, the Rimonim Neptune, whose recent make-over was already wearing thin under the stomping feet of the masses. The desk staff, mostly Indian and Russian immigrants, seemed only barely able to cope with the chaos. My heart went out to the restaurant staff, mostly Russians, as they fought a running battle against entropy among the many buffet and dining tables. No matter how many the chairs they uprighted or spilled dishes they mopped up, there were always more crashes and squeals. I saw a child gleefully open the spigot of the Coco Puff breakfast cereal dispenser and watch the contents empty onto the counter and out into the floor. An attendant walked by and pretended not to notice.

Outside, on the nearby beach, the hotel beach bars compete for the title of disco with the loudest music… and the longest hours. I believe the current title went to our hotel, which was able to both keep me from falling asleep long past midnight, and wake me up again the next morning altogether too early. In short, I would not recommend a holiday in Eilat.

However, from my hotel window I could plainly see the fast-growing part of Aqaba, on the opposite side of the bay. The Jordanian monarchy, in partnership with the Hariri families Saudi Oger construction company, is transforming Aqaba into a major tourist destination. A planned city is fast rising from the waterfronts old fish docks, in fine Gulf style and scope.

Signs around the town announce an ominous “Promise of Growth”, hinting at the bargain forced upon the citizens of Petra, many of whom have been moved away from the waterfront up into new apartment blocks in the surrounding hills. We passed through on our way to Petra (see next point), and I was struck by the opulence of the first hotel to open, a sparkling Intercontinental, with a promise of attentive, smiling staff you would never dream of finding in Israel. I’m not sure how this will all work out for them, but from a tourist’s perspective, it can’t be much less appealing than Eilat.

Cairo, city of the present

Cairo, like many prominent world cities, has had several lives. What sets Cairo apart, is just how far back these flow, clear into the era long before the dawn of human history. Orthodox Christian tradition has it that Jesus took a swing through here as a young lad with his family. As he came by Cairo, he must have seen the pyramids, hard to miss as they are. It's odd to think that that time, year 0 for western civilization, is much closer to us now than it was to the construction of those pyramids, 2500 years prior.

It's this age that sets Cairo apart from other cities with rich pasts. In Rome, threads of the past can be found which run through, almost unbroken to the present day (The Pope being one, himself a descendant of the Pontifex Maximus, chief bridge builder of the ancient village). In Delhi, believers are worshiping right now in the very same mosque where the builder of the Taj Mahal did the same. In Egypt, the pyramids are tourist attractions, nothing more. I just finished Anthony Sattin’s book The Pharoh’s Shadow, in which he searches for signs of continuities from the ancient past. He writes well, but as he hardly finds any, it’s hard to describe the book as a success.

Signs of Cairo’s thousand-year incarnation as a Greek (or at least Hellenistic) city are also faint. Granted, it was never a very important Roman or Byzantine city. My favourite author, William Dalrymple, merely hops through the city on his tour of important sites of the Byzantine/Eastern Church, as described in his excellent From The Holy Mountain. He makes a few church visits in Cairo, but only to interview the Coptic priests about their current political plight, the severity of which is seen in their evasiveness.

There are still a few million Copts in Egypt, and I visited some of their holiest sites, in what’s known as “Old Cairo”. It’s a shrine-packed area of a few acres around the places where the Holy Family stayed while they were in town. Churches and monasteries stand cheek-by-jowl vying for the attentions of the thousands of mostly Catholic, mostly Spanish tourists. In one of the all-too-common accidents of history of this nature, it’s also the exact site where the Pharoh’s daughter found baby Moses, and so among the churches stands one of Egypts last functioning Synagogues, built to mark the site.

The few remaining Copts and the Jews have been subjected to increasing violence as their numbers have dwindled over the decades since Egypt’s independence. Old Cairo, a World Heritage Site, is thus protected by an over-abundance of Cairo’s already-ubiquitous white-uniformed police. They form a cordon around the outside, and visitors must be searched. Inside, UNESCO and US AID have provided funds for what is a very nice restoration, but the resulting marked difference from the rest of Cairo makes it feel more like an amusement park than a part of history. What little life is left in those stone walls is propagated by the several Christian schools, who pumped out their students on the afternoon of my visit to do battle in noisiness with the legions of tourists alongside me. I donated $20 the Synagogue and hurried out.

Pharonic and Coptic signs are there if you are looking, but it’s Cairo’s third incarnation, as a Muslim capital, which leaps out at you. There are mosques everywhere, more than I imagined would be in a supposedly secular state. Many of these were built as part of elaborate tombs during Egypts 150 year period of rule by the Mamluks, slave-kings who could not leave their wealth to their children, and as such blew it all on monuments to themselves. Islamic Cairo, now renamed “Fatimid Cairo” no avoid any confusion with anything “Islamist”, is a collection of narrow alleyways and mosques of all descriptions. Without the danger of attack its not sealed off from anything, and is very much still alive with market stalls, apartments, kids, barber shops and all the other signs of lower-middle-class metropolis life.

Muslim rule ended, more or less, with the rise of Nasser’s Arab Republic. It’s a strange twist of fate that as official Islam waned, its incarnation among the masses rose, and turned upon the minorities in its midst. Egypt’s cities, both Cairo and Alexandria, entered the 20th century with their heritage rich within them. Pre-war Alexandria was from all I have read the best city in the Mediterranean, with foreign oddballs of all descriptions mixing in effortlessly with the native Jews and Copts, not to mention the Muslims. Today little is left.

It all happened as part of the great sorting out of civilizations which occurred amid the dropping tide of globalization which followed the First World War. The rise of the nation-state and the corresponding military means to improve the purity of the corresponding “nations” was all it took to send each ethnic, religious, or linguistic group in search of itself. There are very few places left where distinct communities live side by side – the only places that comes to mind immediately are Kuala Lumpor or Singapore, with their splendid vibrancy of Malay, Chinese, and Indian cultures.

The re-globalization of the past decade is a weak by comparison – what are trade links and satellite communications compared to the immediacy of next door – but it is something. It has spawned some actual diversification, especially in the business community as represented by people like myself, taking ourselves to new lands in the name of commerce. I’m proud to be part of the rebound of diversity, re-conquering Cairo in the name of my ancestral cousins.

Leaving Cairo, Never Easy

I am writing from the Cairo Airport, in a Starbucks, right next to a McDonalds. At the table next to me is a happy, young Saudi family, husband, maybe 25, in a creased dazzling white dish-dash, with his nation’s trademark red-checked headscarf casually wrapped up on top of itself above his head. He and his two young wives (sisters? one wife one sister?) are enjoying matching Big Mac Meals with giant-sized sodas.

The airport here is the first time I’ve seen anything but grace from the Egyptians – they get along well enough with Israel but they certainly don’t like it. The guards all graciously ask my destination, then gruffly ask for my passport and point me about once they hear I am Tel Aviv bound. There’s not much love lost – the team of young Israeli security screeners who interview all passengers at check in bark back and forth with their Egyptian counterparts about matters of queue management in poor and poorer English. I’m willing to cut them some slack – they fly here specifically for the job, then fly back, in shifts, each inbound El Al plane carries the staff that must wait in Cairo for 3 days until the day of the next scheduled flight so they can do their jobs. They ask the usual probing Israeli security questions, staring you in the eyes, asking simple questions rapid fire, waiting for you to trip up. Once the last passenger has past scrutiny, they scamper aboard behind him, undoubtedly relieve to go back to Israel and do whatever it is they do when they are not being confined to their compound in Cairo, unable to wander out for reasons of “security”.

The Egyptian government deserve praise for doing what it can to keep the Palestinians in check and the Middle East peace process on roughly the right track. Like most authoritarian regimes, they are at hard pragmatists, and while they may not love the idea of a bunch of strutting jews discoing and sunbathing and making fortunes just up the coast, they know that continued conflict means continued prestige for the Islamist freedom fighters of Hamas and Hizbollah, who dislike the secular Egyptian dictatorship only marginally less than the Israelis. So they host peace talks, half-heartedly keep weapons smugglers from crossing into Gaza, and do what they can to maintain contacts.

The Egyptian people are by nature welcoming, with a warm, formal hospitality and patience that makes them the approximate opposite of their Israeli neighbors. But they appear to be willing to draw the line at Zionists. I read an article in the paper this morning describing a widely supported protest lodged against the Israeli Ambassador to Egypt by a Egyptian high court judge. The two share a high-end apartment building in a wealthy suburb of Cairo, and it appears that whenever the honourable judge chooses to use the gym, the Israeli is invariably already there, which means the all entrants must be searched by the 5-strong Israeli security detail. If it’s anything like the dressing down that I received at the airport just now, I might be inclined to understand, if not second, His Honor’s side in suggesting that the Envoy find somewhere else to live… like in Israel.

The Egyptian Museum

"Come. Sit." Said the guard, patting the bench next to him. I complied, parking myself on the small bench against one of the thick, cool walls of the Egyptian Musuem in Cairo, my first stop on today's sightseeing. "You take photo?" the guard asked, gesturing at my camera.

"Oh no," I replied, knowing that it was not allowed. I had taken photos, but only when no one was looking.

"You want?" he asked. He was a small man, in his 40's. I'm sure he had a wife and kids, maybe two wives and kids, and probably didn't make that much in the museum. I saw what was coming and shook my head no. "You take photo Ramses," he insisted, gesturing at what was clearly labelled in English as a statue of King Amenhotep IV. The guard got up, walked 50 feet away to stand in among some haphazardly placed lesser statues, tried to look busy for a moment, then turned to shoot me a furtive nod and wink. I dutifully stood up, took my photo, then slipped him 5 Egyptian Pounds ($1) in one of those pleasing sly bribe-passing handshakes.

There may be museums more poorly curated then the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but none would has a more significant collection. The pieces, when considered for there craftmanship, age, and symbolism are simply stunning. Some are up to 5000 years old, and are all the more moving for having remained very aesthetically pleasing right up until today. The jewellery would not at all look out of place on one my friends or sisters. But they are just sort of cast about the cavernous building, like so much furniture on discount in a warehouse sale. My sister, who has been here before, told me to get a guide or I would be lost. So naturally I declined to get a guide.

In a way, the lack of order is almost fitting. To me, the magic of the these artefacts is much more in the stories of their discovery than in the ancient, alien lives of the people who found them – and when they were found, they were locked up in some cramped tomb, piled one on top of the other, certainly in no order and with no captions.

This only dawned on me when I saw some of the photos of the explorers who uncovered them, and the condition in which they found the tombs. King Tutankhamun, a king so minor in the annals of the Pharaohs that his grave was promptly forgotten by his contemporaries and left until Howard Carter stumbled upon it in 1922, beneath some wreckage passed over by generations of prior tomb raiders. They excavated a staircase going down into the earth, into what could have been anything at all. They it was in all likelihood a storage cellar of some sort, but imagine their delight to have found it was one of the richest archaeological finds ever made. I’ve had some lucky breaks in my time, but never anything quite so.

The King Tut exhibit in the museum is, to this layman’s eyes, the only thing really worth going to see. But the sheer amount of gold and glitz, together with those great black and white photos, to make it worth the trip.

Why I travel...

I got a shave in one of Islamic Cairo’s small storefront barber shop. My self-appointed guide and translator, the man I met on the street to whom I told I wanted to get a shave, led me through the rabbits warren of old streets, past kebab shops and market stalls, walking at an almost-trotting pace. We got to the barber shop, where he proudly showed me into a chair next to man with a moustache that showed he knew where to get good barbering. The middle aged little barber produced a razor and went to work. My guide, Mohammad, reassured me “don’t worry, these are good people. They will not kill you.”

One more interesting note about that barber shop – as I was being worked upon, I carried on a loose conversation with the workers and hangers-on, with Mohammad translating. I told them I was American and they immediately responded with an “Obama!” exclamation and a thumbs up. They had been following the election. But interestingly, when I told them that Obama was a muslim and that his middle name was Hussein, they reacted with surprise and pleasure. I myself was surprised that the rumour of Obama’s Islamic terrorist roots hadn’t make it to the Islamic world. I am please to have brought it.

Kushari -- Egyptian Noodles

El Tahrir, a Kushari restaurant

Vivian and I fall into the broad bucket of Gen Y entitled yuppies-before-our-years, and into the more specific sub-segment of foodies; a generation of Americans who grew up in food-focused households, who never new a supermarket aisle without Arugala, and who view food as a past-time. Beyond the implications to my "bottom line", this also means that we talk about food fairly frequently. And one of our more common topics is the similar "food types" (the consultant in me wanted to write "food delivery platforms"), which appear in various world cuisines. Meat-on-a-stick is a common one (kebab, churrascaria, yang rou chuan, etc). Another great one is the meat-wrapped-in-bread (potsticker, empanada, piroghi, etc). America, despite its poor culinary reputation, is the only cuisine to produce a meal that falls into both of those two categories: the corn-dog (Hot dog on a stick, wrapped in bread. Or maybe wrapped in corn. Whatever, it's gross).

Another global phenomenon is... the noodle. Indigenous, perhaps, only to Italy and China, it is eaten all over the world in various forms. Today I found the Egyptian franchise: Kushari. It is often prosaically described as a mixture of chopped noodles, rice, beans, friend onions, and tomatoes, but that's kind of like describing a hamburger as a mixture of flour, yeast, raw beef, and vegetables.

A better description for the food is  "Egyptian Chilli", the aforementioned ingredients are layered together upon a wide bowl, to be mixed together by the diner, together generous pourings of chilli and garlic sauces. The result, actually, is a lot like chilli -- yet a lot easier to digest.

The dish is served in specialized ("verticalized?") eateries which serve nothing else. As I walked into this one, in downtown Cairo, the owner, from behind a table where he was counting receipts asked "Do you understand our menu?" I said I didn't, even though I knew it wouldn't be hard for him to explain.

"We only have Kushari, nothing else. It is 'Egyptian Chilli'. When the waiter comes, just tell him 'small, medium, or large.' He will understand. I nodded and passed upstairs to the dining room, where I found myself among a plain-looking set of Egyptians, taking a respite from whatever shopping or errands had brought them downtown on a weekend Friday.

My order was taken as promised, and the result was predictably excellent.

Update: I just met up with some friends for dinner. They picked the restaurant. Their choice: Kushari!

El Al 443, Tel Aviv to Cairo

Twice a week, El Al, Israel's national airline, sends an ageing 757 to make a late-night round trip from Tel Aviv to Cairo. It's a short flight, basically up and then down again, 250 miles in total. It's New York to Boston. Not many Israeli's know about this flight, several emphatically denied its existence when I told them I was about to take it to visit Cairo for the weekend.

The passengers were tourists, all elderly. A mix of Europeans doing the "Pyramids and the Holy Land" packaged circuit, and retired Israelis, feeding their congenital travel bugs with a short trip to an exotic place. Most, like the man I sat next to, would catch that same 757 on its return leg, exactly a week later.



Lobby of Fairmont Towers

I wonder what those packaged tourists must thing, when their Israel leg comes to a close, and they leave the gleaming highways and shopping malls of the Zionist state for this African megalopolis. Not that Cairo is unpleasant -- I'm writing this from my hotel room in the sparkling new Fairmont Towers, a super-luxury hotel which puts even my very fine Tel Aviv digs to shame.

Cairo is a fine town, with pleasant people, but it abounds with the sort of un-focused energy which comes along with being an Emerging Market, especially one with such an abundance of people. The airport, a massive, imposing building teeming with passengers and attendants alike, glitters with chintz but has a bathroom that is rancid with urine. The hotel doorman, heaps praise upon me during the entire 10 minute walk from my taxi to the check in desk to my room. "Oh, you are so very very smart for coming to Cairo for the weekend! We are having so many monuments for you to see here!" That would not have happened in Tel Aviv.

Indian Food and Democracy

A few years ago, during the pre-surge nadir of America's war in Iraq, I missed a connecting flight to Goa, and was stuck spending the night in Delhi. It was one of the four trips I have taken to India in four consecutive rainy seasons. My friend Sam and I drank two bottles of beer and set out in a (auto)rickshaw for Shahjahanabad, the impoverished old city around the Red Mosque, on the lookout for a  recommended restaurant. Several stops for directions later, mostly soaked, we arrived at Karim's a grilled-meat restaurant located in a series of rooms oddly arranged around the interior courtyard of an ancient apartment building. Waiters dashed in and out of the rain trying to keep their trays of kebabs dry. We we ushered our way in past the crowds of men wearing long white sherwani (shirts), with their beards full but moustaches shaved. I'm told it was the style favored by the prophet.

Sam and I, oversized Americans, attracted more than a few glares as we ordered and ate our meal. Two young men at the table next to us were speaking a foreign language. They wore modern, smart clothes, and their tones, when they rose over the general din, sounded to me a bit like Hebrew. I listened more closely; it was Arabic. They must have noticed by eavesdropping, because they asked where I was from. "America," I told them, and asked where they were from.

"Iraq"

"Oh." I said. Looking for what to say next, I asked "What part?"

"Falluja."

It was not long after those killings. The man smiled at me, with only the faintest hint of menace. He didn't mean harm, but he knew what I was thinking, and enjoyed it a bit. Our conversation continued. Turns out he and his friend were university students, studying, of all things, Environmental Engineering. Again, searching for something to say, I enquired "Ah, was it hard to get a visa to study in Israel?"

"No, it was not hard. India is a true democracy." the man replied. "Unlike America".

That oh-so-barely-sinister grin again. The men finished their meal and left. Our meal was excellent -- Karim's is one of my favorite Indian restaurants.

Skip forward a year or two to another rainy night, last night, less than a week after Obama's election. I had just finished an Indian meal in Southall, London's Little Indian suburb. The restaurant, Madhu's is my other favorite Indian restaurant. It's halfway to Heathrow, and I like to stop by if I have a late night flight. I missed the train I was planning to take and called a local mini-cab company. A few minutes later a minivan picked me up.

"From America!" the driver said. He was a Somali immigrant, father of two, spending his off-hours from day job in data processing. Shaking his head in joy, he told me that "America is the most true democracy in the world. It's just amazing that an African could be a president of America. I don't think it could happen here, not in this country."

They're everywhere!

I missed a turn last night on my way to dinner and had to take a detour through a market district in southern Tel Aviv, where I finally found the hidden presence I knew had to exist: Chinese people! There are some tens of thousands of Asian immigrants in Israel, mostly Filipinos and Thais working in domestic service or agriculture, respectively. I'd seen the odd Filipina maid in the mall near my hotel, but up until now I have not seen anything recognizably Chinese.

The market district, which I'm told is known as Little Asia, is mostly a collection of stalls that serves Asian customers. There are a collection of stalls which sell to cheap Chinese crap, but the most frequented stores were those which sold the Asian foods and ingredients which are probably unlikely to be found elsewhere, such as... Pork!

From Mobile Uploads

The Chinese translation reads something along the lines of "Only place selling fresh pork. We have pork intestines." Interestingly, the staff inside did not appear to be asian.