What would you do for tea?

Sam was sleeping on the bottom bunk of my bed and at about 10 p.m. we  both turned in for an early night in hopes of an early morning. She was having the kind of adventure that was making me rethink my ticket home.

On the go for nine months, having traveled much of South-East Asia and on her way to the desert roads of the Middle East and North-East Africa, she was taking a couple days of rest in Istanbul. She told me a hostel was an unusual stay for her and that she normally pitched tents or stayed in the hospitable homes of strangers.

Longer trips need a stretched out budget, but it only made her tales richer. She told me incredible stories about biking across entire countries and the people she met hitchhiking in different languages.

We decided to step outside for a cigarette, Istanbul’s few stars, and to swap stories in the night. Only moments later our conversation was interrupted by a few Turkish men, yelling from a dark, abandoned building rooftop: “Cay? Cay?” Faceless voices of the night were offering us tea.

After several months of traveling, money starts to run low, and Sam and I were on the same brain wave: “free tea?”

I laughed and nodded. For that hot glass worth a mere single Turkish Lira (approximately $0.8 CDN) and interesting company, we were climbing 4 stories of scaffolding. The unruly structure was built of tiny ladders that were diagonally leaning on each other, and single wooden planks that one had to balance on to reach the next ladder. Walking as though on a tight rope, careful hands had to balance on the winds because holding on to the unsanded wooden planks gave us splinters.

Sam laughed nervously, and while tip toeing on our lifeline, she called out our stupidity: “We’re going to break our necks.”

I agreed. “This better be the best cay of our lives."

At the top we were awaited by Adnan, Ahmed, and Shukur. They had furnished a couple of rooms in the building and it was difficult to say whether they were living illegally in that city of 18 million. Though they skipped up the scaffolding with much ease, I had to assume that the building once had stairs, because their rooms had couches, beds, tables and a television.

The men supplied endless cups of cay and not a single word of English, so we relied on the few Turkish words that Sam had picked up while traveling, and the few words that I understood because they were similar in Arabic. But mostly we relied on barely comprehensible gestures.

They had very modest means, but were endlessly generous, insisting on making us a spaghetti dinner and giving us cay every time our glasses ran dry.

After a few hours in that unfinished building, where we sat in what would have been a hallway if it had walls, we started to say our goodbyes. Our new friends walked us back to our hostel which stood at the foot of the scaffolding.

They laughed at our quaking knees and shrieks as we climbed back down, and teased us by cheering when we reached the bottom with our lives in tact.

As Sam and I reached our room we laughed at our random evening and our failed attempt at having an early night and took to our beds. By morning she was gone, taking off at about 6 a.m. to hitchhike to the Georgian border and make her way into Iran.

From Galata Bridge

From the ferry to Eminonu

 

  

the fisherman’s boy is also a fisherman

         There was something precocious about the way he brushed his brow with the back of his hand and took to his fishing. Again he frees a tiny hand from his fishing rod and brushes the late morning sweat from his brow. As though his mother looked at him the day he was born and gave him a fishing rod before giving him a name.

    He barely looked up at the skyline: kingdoms of ancient conquerors and towers of modern day businessmen. He was still too young to care about someone else’s history, or to preoccupied with his father and grandfather’s way of life.

    All of his tiny limbs were suddenly jerked by the pull of a catch. Squinting eyes looked to the tiny dangling fish that flopped in the air millions of miles in front of the morning sun that continued climbing the sky. But from just the right angle the sun also hung from the reeled in line, illuminating a tiny fish that glinted and sparkled and suddenly seemed much more impressive.

    He hurriedly unhooked the fish and darted 40 feet down the waterfront to a man with silent eyes and hands that were led by the same morning ritual. “Papa! Papa!” he received a quick nod of approval and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and returned to his fishing at his original spot.

    As the ferry pulled into the dock, I sipped the rest of a Turkish coffee that I hoped would chase away the lingering sleep from an all too late night. And as I boarded the ferry to cross the Bosporus the little boy stood just a few feet away with his eyes on the water.

Galata Bridge

  

Transition to the West: Istanbul.

           It seems like the perfect transition to the West: an outrageously over-populated city that has all the customs of both the East and West because it is literally divided into the two continents.

    I have a very good feeling about this.

Galata Bridge

Aya Sofya: doesn't get much more gorgeous than this

India: Conclusions

“Why?!”

    It was the question I heard every time I told aunts, uncles and most of all my mother when I said that I wanted to go to India.

    “Go on exchange,” she said, “but please go somewhere else. It’s dangerous. It’s dirty.”

    It was many years ago that my mother left war torn Eritrea; fleeing the magical East for the modern West, and consoled by the thought that it would bring her children a far better education.

    I understood where she was coming from, because now here was her youngest, running into the arms of another developing country, and for an education, no less.

    “Your aunt says it’s crazy over there,” she told me.

    I would be lying if I said that that wasn’t part of the attraction.

    “Why do you want to go?”

Because a sixth of the world lives there and I want to take part in their chaos.
Because I am fascinated by Indian traditions and my curiousity is insatiable.
Because I want to shock my system.
Because I want to feel Indian summers and monsoons on my skin.
Because I don’t entirely know why and that makes the draw more irresistible.

    Now that I have stayed in India for sixth months, I am still not sure I have a better idea of why I wanted to be there. But I think I got what I was looking for because it was the most intense 6 months of my life.

As I wrote for and subsequently quit a paper that I couldn’t believe in.
As I rented a room from the most psychotic woman I have ever met before taking up a new flat next door to a Bollywood star.
As I became a freelance photographer published in Time Out Magazine, The MiDDay, and Mumbai Boss, and secretly only part-way know what I am doing.
As I became a fixture on the morning train whose elbows found a home in my ribcage and whose smells and yells would test my every nerve, and who on my very first Mumbai morning made me think, “Well, Mom was right.”
As I spent evenings yelling English lessons over chatty teenagers with huge hearts, who couldn’t understand my accent and I theirs.
As I met and played with children who had absolutely nothing, but the biggest smiles I have ever seen, and realized that although my mother raised me without a cent, but with hugs and a boundless selflessness that I still struggle to comprehend, I am completely and utterly spoiled.
As I had my heart filled and broken and the most frustrating days in my life  set alongside the happiest ones.
As I learned that in my college there are no real schedules, and professors often didn’t show up, but it was okay because India, well, she was teaching me a lot.

Like how my temper is often out of control and I need to tap into the patience I once had.
How I am not sure that I have it in me to teach 14 year-olds.
How some strangers, even the ones who seem completely bizarre, are the warmest people you’ll ever meet if you give them the chance, and how some strangers will unhesitatingly take you for all that you’re worth.
How it is impossible to call anyone one thing or another, because everyone is everything at once.
How home is just a feeling that you find in people you navigate towards.
How I don’t suspect that I will ever stay in one place for very long.
And how I want nothing but to write, write, write, and see every corner of the world, while helping people as much as I can along the way.

Calcutta

Mother and daughter: Ladakh

Jagdish Temple, Udaipur

Bollywood Debut

I enjoyed everyday of traveling outside Bombay, but I couldn’t help but feel homesick for it, which may seem strange since I lived there for a mere four months.
   
    Needless to say, I was excited to return. I am always surprised when I meet travelers who tell me how much they loath Bombay, or how they darted out of the city as quickly as they flew into it. Granted, the city can be overwhelming, but with a second look the same factors that may initially seem suffocating turn out to be endless options and an awe-inspiring vitality.

    Luckily, Elsie was just as excited to see the city or the first time as I was to return. We vowed to go out every night in attempt to stretch out the days and pull at the corners of the night to see the hours that many don’t know exist.

    Late nights on marine drive, at parties, and on rooftops were matched with groggy days that result from 3 hours of sleep, kicking back coffees while watching the monsoon flood the streets, and running through markets and museums on nothing but adrenaline.

    As is the case with living in a new city, I put a few touristy experiences on the back burner thinking “I’ll get to them eventually” but perhaps never would have if it wasn’t for traveling with someone who was seeing the city or the first time.

   One of the things Elsie was dying to do was be in a Bollywood film. Extras are scouted everyday on Causeway, and I always had the excuse of an early morning at college or work to not go. This time there were no excuses, so I decided to join her. I have heard many tales of bad experiences acting in Bollywood films as a foreigner, that include being left in the trailer all day, or never getting paid. Though of course a foreigner never getting paid isn’t so tragic, since the gig pays only 500 rupees, about $10.

    We went ahead with it and were told the day would be spent as extras in a club scene, which essentially meant dancing all day—sounded pretty great.

     The set was in the suburbs, more specifically Andheri, and after getting off of the bus we were welcomed with breakfast, and given a few minutes to mingle before being rushed off to the costume room, which basically meant having a couple of men throw clothes at us that they thought may fit and the girls gasping at how little they were expected to wear.

    It took six costume changes before I begrudgingly went on set. The first five must have been made for girls who were half a foot shorter than me.

    I wanted to look out for Bollywood actors that I might recognize, but I realized that this was going to be difficult since I could count all the ones I might recognize on one hand. After entering the club with my “boyfriend,” one of the leads came on set and the director yelled cut, giving me a moment to release my excitement.

    He was one of the main characters from the Bollywood film I had watched on my last flight, which had also garnered some international acclaim.

    “Hey! You’re in 3 Idiots, right?”

    “Yeah, that was a great movie.”

    I wasn’t sure if he was being funny, or just felt that strongly about his own work. I awkwardly laughed it off.

    “Unlike this movie. It’s total shit.”

    “Really?!” I asked.

    “No, it’ll be good. It’s like an Indian version of the Italian Job.”

    In the following scene as the same actor, Omi Vaidya, went to enter the club and the door handle popped right off. He turned around to a couple of foreign extras, “Welcome to Bollywood.”

    I wondered if instances like that, including water leaks in the ceiling and costumes falling apart part way through scenes also happened in Hollywood.

    Wanting to be able to pick ourselves out in the film in 6 months, Elsie and I decided to tear up the dance floor to try to get some camera time. Unfortunately that may have been the reason we barely got a chance to sit out a scene on that exhausting 13 hour day.

    The shots got more and more ridiculous as we and others tried to see how much we could get away with on set—from fist pumping, to subtle dance offs and outrageous gestures. The shooting should have ended at about 8 p.m., but by 9:30 it began to eat away at our night and I was getting grumpy. I asked one of the directors if we were going to be able to go home soon, and if we could get paid more.

    The first answer was a lie: “Yes”. And the second was an obvious and much expected “No.”

     Once we were finally taken back on the bus and released into the streets of Colaba it was 11:30 p.m. Our night was just beginning and our earnings were spent much more quickly than they were earned.

Players comes out December 23rd 2011

Gokarna

Gokarna was the second city that I visited with one of my best friends from Canada, who also happened to be studying in India this year.

    Traveling on my own the last couple months has been incredible, but I welcomed the change of being joined by an old friend. At 6 a.m. I arrived in Hampi. It took about 20 hours of bus rides, and I stumbled into Elsie’s hotel room, slipped under the mosquito net, and fell on top of her in a sort of hug/collapse.

    We later both admitted that we were a little nervous about traveling with such an old friend, since 24/7 exposure for two weeks is bound to highlight some differences. Living on opposite ends of the country, we only see each other a couple of times a year, and the last time we traveled together we were only 17: ditching class, with all of our money from our respective part-time jobs in hand, running amok through the streets of Paris and Rome. The teenage thirst for freedom was satisfied by art galleries and picnics at times that we should have been in class, and late nights streets and clubs when we shouldn’t have been awake.

    But 5 years later things are much the same, though slightly more responsible, with excitement, exploring and exhilaration.

    It wasn’t considered to be a good time for a beach town, since monsoon season had already kicked in. But with the beaches to ourselves and a few new friends, we took in the relaxation before gearing up or the return to the big city.

    Our days were spent with long walks, swimming and our insatiable appetite for Indian spices. The only thing interrupting the night’s laughter were the mangos that fell from the trees, along with other fruits unknown to the West that we cracked open on rocks and put on the tips of our tongues, which tasted the salt of the sea every time we licked our lips. The sea that we so often shrugged our shoulders and fell into every time we felt the downpour of the clouds and figured, “Well, we’re wet anyways.”
 

Hampi

    The boulders were larger than any I had ever seen and so incredibly round that it was hard to believe erosion could achieve such perfection. They spanned that little Karnatakan town, only to be interrupted by the palm trees that lay in between them. And as we climbed the boulders in search of the much talked about waterfall, that we did not yet know runs dry outside of monsoon season, we were accompanied by the banana plantations and palm trees that provided little refuge against the incessantly hot, hot, sun.

We hopped boulders that were scattered in the lake, and I couldn’t help but think they were arranged by someone who was looking for the same waterfall.

    Once the futility of the search became palpable, we asked a local where the waterfall was and she insisted on leading us there. It was a far more precarious path than I would have ventured alone, and as we skipped and slipped on boulders we wondered how much she was going to charge us. While the four of us struggled, she effortlessly hopped from one boulder to another: an old pattern for wizened feet.

    Finally she stopped and we gazed around or the waterfall and thought perhaps she was giving us a break.

“50 rupees,” she said.

“Where is the waterfall?”

    She pointed to a spot between two boulders where the water moved very slightly faster. We laughed at our disappointment, but weren’t about to spend that much on not seeing a waterfall.

“10 rupees.” She agreed and skipped off as gracefully as she came.

    The much anticipated monsoon slowed down the surge of tourists and in a town best known or its stunning, crumbling temples we were more often surrounded by evidence of ancient civilizations than present ones.

    The only people we usually found at such sites were Indian families, who were locals or tourists, picnicking on the holy sites of their ancestors. One kind family insisted on us joining them, and with rice biryani poured onto banana leaves, crossed legs, with names forgotten and faces immortalized by camera lenses, the afternoon was passed in one of Shiva’s ancient temples.

.

  

Differences

    It is never intentional. I hold fast to principle and never realize that I am making a scene until it is too late.

    As I waited for the 9 p.m. bus from Bangalore to Hampi, I realized that I was in for a 12-hour bus ride on an empty stomach, and headed across the street to a restaurant. It was packed with men, and the waiter who stood at the door immediately directed me downstairs to what he called the “family section”. Stepping out of the evening’s stifling heat, I wasn’t going to be easily convinced to step into an equally sweaty, dark, basement.

    “Why can’t I just sit up here?”

    “Downstairs, ma’am. Women sit downstairs.”

    This wasn’t my first such encounter. When I was in Calcutta, I accidentally took a bar for a restaurant and was immediately shown the door.

    This time, I stubbornly walked out of the restaurant and into the next one. Same thing.

    “Why can’t I just sit right here?”

    Although a part of me wants to raise my voice and demand equality, I wonder if it’s a Western inclination and a Western understanding of equality. Having grown up in the West but in an Eastern family, I sometimes feel split between the two sentiments. I think it’s the same inclination to yell in frustration that also introduces a tendency to oversimplify.

    I know that I feel wronged when I am treated differently for being a woman, but at the same time I don’t know what to think when I remember that so much of my family lives in lands where it is inappropriate for a woman to walk out of doors unaccompanied by a man. And while I don’t believe such treatment of woman is right, it all too easily becomes a conversation of “we are right and they are wrong because they are different”.

    I began to hesitate on insisting on sitting in a section of the restaurant that was so clearly allocated for men. Ultimately, it felt like wandering into a foreign space and assuming that I understood why things were done the way they were. There are thousands of years of culture and religion that have come to shape modern India, and to think it is possible to grasp that entirely in a mere six months is not just overly ambitious, but simply ignorant.

    Before I could retract my objections the waiter was sitting me down and trying to take my order.

    “Menu?” I asked.

    He paused and gestured to the man, ostensibly the manager, who was waving me over. Silently, he looked at me for a couple moments:

“English or Arabic?”

“English.”

“English or Arabic?”

“English.”

“English or Arabic?”

    I don’t know how he picked out my Arab roots from a face, that mostly shows my mother’s Eritrean heritage. Perhaps he repeated himself because my voice was being stolen away by the wind from the nearby window that was carrying car horns and the Bollywood music of car speakers that were flying by, or maybe he was just looking for the answer he wanted.

    “Arabic,” I said reluctantly.

    Unfortunately, he didn’t see my reluctancy as a hint to how rusty my Arabic is. After 6 months in India, I know the meanings of all the typical Indian dishes, but to now have them riddled off in a sort of part Hindi and part Arabic--in a dialect inevitably different than mine—was verging on incomprehensible.

    But at the end of nearly every dish, I heard the Arabic word for chicken and beef. Apparently I had to make a point of holding my ground in what seemed like the only non-vegetarian friendly restaurant in India.

“Aloo gobhi (Potato Cauliflower),” he said quickly, and I nodded.

    They immediately brought over my food but without any cutlery, which I didn’t mind. I’ve come to think food tastes better off my hands, but maybe it’s the taste of nostalgia because I watched my mother eat off of her hands all throughout my childhood, and it seemed much more graceful than the way that most people ate with cutlery. Next to my mother sat my sister and the juxtaposition they held was bizarre.  Her cutlery was still guided by the English boarding schools she attended as a child. I would sit across from my mother, clumsily imitating her while teasing my sister’s propriety.

    So eating with my hands will always remind me of my childhood, but perhaps it looked unnatural after so many years because the waiter dropped a spoon on my table moments later. And when I looked up, I could feel the stares of men who entered the restaurants, whose gestures and conversation told me that they were regulars, and I was out of place.

I responded as I always do to such looks: awkward smiles all around.