discovered Dmitri Shostakovich

Last week I went to listen to the Michelangelo String Quartet at the Sage. One of the pieces played was Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No.2. in A major Op. 68, composed by him in 1944. It pretty much blew my mind... quite unlike anything I'd ever heard in western classical music... Parts of it made me feel quite distressed, an emotion that I wouldn't exactly associate with music - powerful stuff - this is not the kind of music that makes you zone out and which becomes nice background music after awhile. So I've been thinking of looking it up on youtube ever since and finally found the entire piece today. It comprises of four movements:

1. Overture: Moderato con moto
2. Recitative and Romance: Adagio
3. Waltz: Allegro
4. Theme with Variations: Adagio

Two of the movements are each on two separate videos, so there are 6 videos in all that cover the entire piece:


Movement I


Movement II (1/2)


Movement II (2/2)


Movement III


Movement IV (1/2)


Movement IV (2/2)

beginning the jordan trip...

Its been a while since I traveled with a group of friends and it was a welcome change to my solitary travels. I used to travel a lot with friends during my CEPT days and did a bit during my Berkeley days as well but having traveled alone quite a few times over the past 13-14 years, I have often thought of the difference. I was - and still am - convinced that traveling with others usually makes me less able to "feel" my new surroundings... or maybe it is the nature of this "feeling" that changes profoundly when one is journeying alone in an unknown place amongst unknown people... it is only when I have traveled alone that places or moments or interactions with people have truly moved me (though a couple of moments in Syria proved to be the exception to this) or have remained stamped in my otherwise rotten memory. This is not to say that I find traveling alone "fun" and it invariably has its lonely moments too, but it is often also beautiful in a way that I have rarely found while traveling with others and which I wouldn't care to describe in words. But this trip wasn't meant to be one of those travel experiences. This was meant to be fun, in the company of friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in more than two years.

the girls at the beirut airport waiting for our flight to amman
(and it seems we were having such a good time waiting that we forgot to check our boarding time and then had to make a dash for it; they even had to announce our names)

"I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."
- Mark Twain

Like or hate - seems a bit extreme - perhaps Mark Twain was being witty or maybe he meant traveling with someone for a month! Still, the four of us had 3 days together which involved traveling by air and road, crossing international borders and one of us (me) getting held up for hours at the border, journeying everyday to a different place, searching for hotels last-minute and spending each night at a different place, most of us not knowing the language, sitting on donkeys, one of the donkeys stumbling and falling on one of us leading to a muscular sprain, etc. After that three of us had another 2-3 days together. So I am happy to report that we all pretty much still like each other ;-) In fact, before beginning the trip I had wondered how it would go, because each of us has probably somewhat different ideas about travel and because I've become so used to doing it all my way that now I find myself almost reluctant to travel with others (and I had another 7 days in Syria with V, another friend, so it was going to be a long trip in the company of friends). But the trip turned out to be quite lovely, despite a few mishaps and trying to squeeze in too much of Jordan into 3 days. I only wish I'd had more time to take off my shoes, sit back and enjoy the company of the girls.

still at the beirut airport: H doing accounts, C checking the net for hotels in jordan?

Jordan trip photographs coming soon - once I figure out how to retrieve them from my digital memory card coz I deleted them by mistake before downloading all of them to my laptop!

baalbek (lebanon)

On my third and last day in Lebanon, I decided to throw in my lot with Varun, public transport, and the ruins of the temple complex of Baalbek, one of the largest temple complexes of the Roman empire. I had been torn between wanting to see something (more) of Beirut and going outside Beirut with friends (different friends were going in different directions for the day), and ultimately I chose the latter partly because I do get enough time traveling alone anyway! :-)

We took a shared taxi or "service" (ser-vee-s) to a mini-bus stop at what seemed to be somewhere on the periphery of the city - I felt I could've been somewhere on the outskirts of Bombay along the western express highway, except that there was something like a tank underneath the nearby flyover. Hopped into a mini-bus (basically a big van) for Baalbek. Baalbek is at an altitude so we passed into mountains from where we could see parts of Beirut spread out below us along the Mediterranean sea - a beautiful sight! It had snowed in the mountains and the air was crisp.

Baalbek was wonderful... we'd had an early start and so we were one of the few people at the site when we got there. Spent a good 3-4 hours there... while Varun did his architectural historian thing, I just aimlessly wandered about, looking at the ruins and the snowy mountain peaks beyond from every angle possible.

the row of columns seen in the distance (in the middle of the photo) are the
only remains of the Temple of Jupiter

Temple of Bacchus on the right (the best preserved temple at the site)

Temple of Bacchus (for the colossal scale of the temple, look at the people standing near the dark entrance-way on the left of the temple - not even sure you can see them unless you blow up the photo)
(Also check out this Library of Congress photograph of the temple from around the 1910s, before
restoration work was carried out)

Baalbek is a listed World Heritage site and to write more about it here, I decided to re-read some of the history I'd probably read at the site. But the internet is really fascinating when one starts searching for stuff, and so I've just spent a good hour or two reading about Baalbek - I'm sure I didn't read any of the stuff at the site with half this interest. Rather was just lost in the actual atmosphere of the ruins and the mountains beyond. Anyway, so I'm going to go on about the history a bit below (Sorry to those not interested. This is where my nerdy bit comes out, and given that I have a rotten memory this is my chance to put down some of what I read for later reference. You can always stop at this blog-post here or skim down to the last paragraph which might be of some interest to those less interested in architecture and ancient/Roman/medieval history, and more interested in contemporary politics).

Couple of historical tit-bits from the UNESCO World Heritage website:
"The origin of the name Baalbek is not precisely known. The Phoenician term Baal means 'lord' or 'god' and was the title given to the Semitic sky-deity. The word Baalbek may therefore mean 'God of the Beqaa valley' (the local area) or 'God of the Town', depending on different interpretations of the word." During the Phoenician period, Baalbek was an agricultural village where a triad of fertility gods were worshipped. It came to be known as Heliopolis during the Hellenistic period (the period following the conquests of Alexander the Great, i.e., approx. 320 BC onwards). The Romans arrived in Phoenicia in 64 BC, following which this temple complex, one of the Roman empire's largest, was built over a period of more than two centuries. "The Romanized triad of Heliopolis (Jupiter, Venus and Mercury) came to replace the Phoenician triad (Baal-Shamash, Anta and Alyn)."

Now on other websites, Mercury isn't mentioned, and I certainly don't remember reading of Mercury when I visited the site. There is indeed a small temple to Venus somewhere in the complex. Also other websites mention different names for the earlier dieties: Baal, Hadad (Dionysus) and Atargatis (Astarte). One of these websites goes on to say that: "Baal-Hadad was worshipped under the Roman name Jove [thats's Jupiter], Astarte was worshipped under the Roman name Venus, and Dionysus was worshipped under the Roman name Bacchus. This sort of religious integration was common for Romans: wherever they went, the gods they encountered were either incorporated into their own pantheon as newly recognized deities or they were associated with their current deities but as simply having different names. Because of the cultural and political importance of people's deities, such religious integration helped smooth the way for cultural and political integration as well."
Interesting stuff.

Couple of architectural tit-bits from the UNESCO World Heritage website:
"At Baalbek-Heliopolis, the phenomenon of religious syncretism, which amalgamated the old Phoenician beliefs with the myths of the Graeco-Roman pantheon, was prolonged by an amazing stylistic metamorphosis. The Syro-Phoenician formulae of the Seleucid period were fused with the classic decorative grammar of the Ara Pacis Augustae. There resulted an architecture of a considerable expressive force which was combined, without redundancy, in the ornamental motives of the colonnades, niches and exedras and was also freely expressed in the ceilings with sculpted coffered panels and the framework of the doorways."

Unfortunately I didn't take many photos of the ornamental carvings and most of those that I did are blurry. But here are some.

Entrance to the Temple of Bacchus

The UNESCO World heritage website also mentions some subsequent histories: "During Byzantine Christian times the temple was used as a church and was dedicated to the Christian martyr St Barbara." And "in 634, Muslim armies entered Syria and besieged Baalbek. A large mosque was built within the walls of the temple compound, which was converted into a citadel."
Interestingly, another website (also see this and there are many others) mentions the Byzantine history of the site differently, and refers to the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius having torn down the alters of Jupiter's Great Court and having built a basilica using the temple's stones and architectural elements. I wonder why the UNESCO World Heritage "official history" narrates the Byzantine Christian takeover of the site in less than violent terms than it does the Islamic takeover of the site. Am I reading too much into it? You tell me...

Finally, I might note that today Baalbek is a stronghold of the Hezbollah. After seeing the ruins we walked into the actual city along with some friends from the conference we'd bumped into. At a number of places we could see Hezbollah's presence in the form of these particular black flags. Wanting to know a bit more, I surfed the internet: In the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, Baalbek was one of the cities targeted because of Hezbollah's huge presence there. Some innocent people also got killed. Here is a link to a NYTimes article on it. A UNESCO mission later looked into the damage the war did to Lebanon's cultural heritage. It found that the fissures on the lintels of the temples of Jupiter and Bacchus had probably widened because of vibrations from bombings nearby and recommended close monitoring. Also the souk/market and some old houses in the Old City of Baalbek, not part of the property inscribed on the World Heritage List, were damaged by bombs. The souk was one of the areas we'd walked through - and most of it looked good as new (and touristy and uninteresting to me), and it was here that we'd seen some of the black flags. Hezbollah was involved in the post-war reconstruction of parts of Beirut so it would not be surprising if it had had a hand in reconstructing Baalbek's souk as well.

Came back to Beirut via mini-bus. Unlike when we went, the mini-bus stopped at various points (check-points) along the way back to Beirut. The driver would slow down to almost a stop, guys in military wear would peer inside and sometimes we'd be flagged on and sometimes we had to stop. The sliding door of the mini-bus would be opened and the guys would stick their head in, asking some for their papers (some sort of identification). Once they looked at our passports too. I kept wondering what it was all about - what were they really checking. Don't know enough of the politics in the region to figure this one out.

beirut

Don't know why but I didn't take out my camera in Beirut. Maybe it was for the best that I saw and experienced the city without being encumbered by looking at the city through frames (well, thats the only way I can console myself now). Not that I saw much of Beirut, which is a pity, but between a conference, catching up with friends I hadn't met in 2 years and spending an evening out with the folks whose work-place/apartment some of us were living in, I managed to spend my 2 days in Beirut confined to the area around Hamra, Sanayeh and the American University of Beirut (AUB). I guess I will have to wait until Lebanese visas become easier for Indians to get, and then I will have to visit Beirut again!

Meanwhile what can I say about Hamra, Sanayeh and AUB? Well, let me start from the beginning. I got to Beirut at 2 am - A, a friend of H's (who I know from Berkeley) had arranged for a cabbie to pick me up from the airport and take me to an apartment used by some artists & activists as a work-place - some of the Berkeley students who were there for the conference were staying there. So when I came out of the airport, there was a cabbie holding a sign saying Reni Desau. Presuming that was me, I said hello to him and he ushered me to his car. And then we tried to communicate with his very very broken English and my zero Arabic. It turned out that he didn't know where to take me and although I had the address written down in English and I read it out to him, it drew a bit of a blank. So had to call A and wake her up - she not only gave him directions to the apartment but stayed on the phone with us until we reached there! After that, she had to tell him that I had only limited Lebanese currency on me (not enough to pay him) so I would pay him partly in that and partly in British pounds. Now US dollars function as a regular currency in Lebanon (anywhere and everywhere you can pay in US dollar notes if you so wish) (one of the only countries it seems where two currencies operate simultaneously), but thats not the case with British pounds. Anyway, he seemed fine with A's explanation so that was that. And thus I got to Mansour Aziz Apartment in Sanayeh.

A run-down apartment building with big rooms, high ceilings and beautiful big balconies. My only photos of Beirut are of the balcony of our apt and a couple from the balcony.

the balcony at Mansour Aziz Apartment

from the balcony

Later, on asking A, she explained that many of the buildings are in worse condition, some might be in better condition but are empty, with the owners waiting for the prices to go up so that they can pull them down to make taller buildings. We could see new and taller buildings, often uglier, that were coming up to replace the older buildings of the area, some of which were beautiful. (I wish I had taken out my camera!!)

AUB was a 20 minute walk through Hamra, a cosmopolitan part of the city with lots of shops, cafes, restaurants, hotels, apartments - not glitzy though. Like many universities elsewhere, AUB was bustling with students the next morning. Its also right at the edge of the blue Mediterranean Sea - most enviable. Many of the AUB buildings are made from a whitish-yellowish limestone (I think thats what it is) and entering the university through the main gate the College Hall building looked lovely in the early morning sun. Spent the day in the conference at AUB though did step out for lunch during which I had some fantastic food - unfortunately have forgotten the name of the cafe as well as what I ate but it was this fantastic meat dish made in yogurt (mouth watering as I write). And everywhere they give you this lebanese/syrian flat bread (I think it might be called khubz in Arabic) often with a bowl of olive oil for dipping. I was so obssessed with the meat in yogurt preparation that I had something similar to it the next day at lunch as well (mouth still watering as I write). Okay, just did a google search, and it seems that what I ate was Shish-Barak (mouth watering even more on seeing the photos in the link). Had dinner with Herlily and Cecilia, old friends from Berkeley I hadn't met in 2 years. Then went back to the apartment.

Some of my fellow-conference-goers and the folks who used the apartment as work-place were there and we headed out to a pub in Hamra to join some of their friends. Had my first Almaza (a Lebanese beer) of the trip over a chat with a Palestinian from Ramallah who now lives in Vancouver. It was his first time in Beirut too, also for a conference, but of quite a different kind. His was in a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut and was about the Palestinians' right to return. Later in the evening, I found another Palestinian sitting next to me and as a couple of us talked to him, it emerged that he's a puppet artist and has founded an organization that does puppet theatre. Some of the puppet shows they'd done sounded really interesting and quite profound. I noticed the crinkly corners of his eyes which were full of good humour. At one point, talking about politics in the region, he joked about how they were very good at making borders. Humour is one way to talk about it.

Towards the end of the evening a group of people came into the pub and someone pointed out that Reem Kelani, a well-known Palestinian singer, was part of the group. I just looked her up on google and I see a blonde woman whereas the woman I remember had dark hair - maybe I was looking at the wrong woman in the group all along or she's dyed her hair. By the end of the evening the inside of the pub was full of people singing and dancing to Arabic music that I don't think I can really describe.

Can't seem to figure out how to embed a video from youtube here, but here's a link to one of Reem Kelani's songs (there's a wonderful pianist in this too): "Yafa" ("Jaffa")
Written by Jaffa-born poet Mahmoud Salim al-Hout (1917-1998) who represents the generation that lived through the nakbah - the "catastrophe" of the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. Al-Hout wrote this after losing all his manuscripts when fleeing Jaffa. The lyrics go:

Yafa! My tears have dried up

I weep for you with stricken eyes

Will I ever see you?

Will I live long enough?

How are your sister towns?

How are they?

I long for them

As if each were a paradise.

And those we left behind?

Those we left for dead.

I'm weary! I'm weary!

But in my weariness I only complain to God

And to no one else.

Yafa. Yafa!

The next day again the conference, a good lunch and dinner, ended the evening at another pub in Hamra. The next day made an early start to Baalbek...