A Few Questions

A couple of years ago, I was asked by another blogger to answer a few questions about myself. I had forgotten about it, and then today I was going through my documents looking for old things I had written, as I have finally and officially started writing my book, and there it was, the questions I had answered. So, I updated them just a tiny bit and here they are...

Who are you?

My name is Robert, but everyone calls me Robb. I am 43 years old, was born in Orange, California, grew up all over the US, spent 13 years living in Holland, 3 ½ living in New Delhi and the last year in Istanbul.

What do you do?

Before the recession hit, I was an executive in an advertising agency, heading up planning and strategy. Since the recession, I have been doing freelance work which includes plays, writing articles, voice-overs, acting in television pilots, movies and TV commercials. I also try and spend part of each day writing and taking pictures.  I have been teaching English for the past year as the other activities don’t really pay the bills.

What is your true passion?

I have a few of those. Writing, traveling and photography. I am happiest when doing all of those at the same time.

What do you like?

Travel – exploring places I have never been, and even better if nobody I know has ever been either. Scuba diving in the Red Sea. Going to the cinema. Watching entire seasons of television shows on DVD. Cold pizza for breakfast. After clubbing, late night meal consisting of pancakes, onion rings and a chocolate malt – seriously. Snowboarding – especially if I can be the first one down a piste after a night of snowfall. Elephants. Long walks on beaches – I love stormy beaches with rough seas. Spending time with friends. Long conversations ranging from the completely stupid to the stimulatingly intellectual. A great book with strong characters – I love Victor Hugo. A great play – I love musicals. The smell of Christmas. Vin chaud after a long day of snowboarding. Disneyland. Fondue with lots of friends on a snowy night. Champagne for no reason at all. Dancing like a lunatic. Singing in the shower. Going out on my terrace in monsoon rains and just getting soaked. Making people laugh. Being the center of attention.

What do you hate?

Anything and anyone who succeeds or profits in any way at the expense or detriment of others. Selfishness, people who hate, prejudice, war, people with no respect to other people, the earth or themselves. People who can willingly and intentionally cause harm to someone else.

What are you also good at?

I haven’t shown it in the last few years to anyone, but I am pretty good cook. I am also good at making people laugh. Usually.

What was your childhood dream?

My childhood dream was to be a star, a great big movie star. Then I decided that movies were not real acting, so I decided I should be a star of the stage. Then I decided that opera was the highest form of theatre, so I decided I would be an opera star. My voice didn’t agree.

What is your adult dream?

To travel, write and take pictures. I want to see and document as much as I can about the world around me and the things I experience.

What makes you happy?

Travel. Photography. Spending time with the friends I almost never get to see.

If you could, what would you change?

All my friends would be with me. My dad would still be alive. My family would all get along. I would speak more languages. There would be no borders between countries, the world would be an open place, free and safe to go anywhere.

What are your favorite 3 objects?

I try not to have favorite objects, as I prefer experiences to possessions, but if I must pick, then I will say: My camera, my passport and the teddy bear I bought at the Christmas market in Brussels. If I can pick things that aren’t objects, then my memories, my friends and the life I have had that far exceeds anything I ever imagined for myself.

What is your favorite…?

I can never pick a favorite anything, as most of what I like and how I like it is driven by my mood and the moment. I find having an absolute favorite of anything to be too constricting. I always have lists of favorites and it always annoys people who ask this question looking for one response. There are just so many fabulous options out there, I can’t ever pick just one…  Of anything.

And what about love?

What about it? I am not usually one to kiss and tell… Unless there is a book or movie deal involved… 

Welcome to Africa

After a lifetime of dreaming and almost a year of planning, I finally arrived in Africa for an extended holiday. I have been to Tunisia and Egypt, but those aren’t “Africa” as I had imagined. I grew up with thoughts of wild animals, exotic foods and villages and experiencing different cultures. And those are some of the things I hope to experience before my holiday is finished.

I left Istanbul last Thursday evening on the Egypt Air flight to Cairo, where I would change planes for Dar es Salaam. The airport in Cairo was quite chaotic. Normally, when changing planes, you just go to the gate of the next flight. Not in Cairo. In Cairo, you go to a transfer “desk”, which is basically a tiny table covered in boarding passes and a stamp pad, manned by three people each referring you to the next when you have a question. So I waited and finally got to the front of the line, had my boarding pass stamped with the word “transit” and then went through another passport check and then through security. Again. Once through security, I had just enough time to go through the next security before it was time to board the flight to Dar.

The flight itself was uneventful but their choice in entertainment is questionable. There weren’t any personal entertainment systems on the planes, so we all had to watch the monitors if you wanted to see anything. It wasn’t so bad that nothing was in English, but it got really bad when I looked up and saw a computer animated cow with bleached-blonde hair, wearing a brightly flowered sundress witting and having tea with another cow wearing too much make-up and an equally offensive brightly colored sundress. That was just before the scantily clad yet well coiffed cat in the mid-drift baring shirt started to dance. I decided it was time for my own entertainment so I buried my face in my laptop to catch up on “Game of Thrones.” I tried to sleep, but I was just too excited.

Jambiani Beach

I arrived in Dar at half past five in the morning. Unlike most airports these days, when we got off the plane, we weren’t met by a bus. We walked across the tarmac to the arrivals hall. I miss those days when we could walk across the tarmac to and from the plane. The visa process was quick and within about 15 minutes of landing, I was in the car, heading for Ulco’s house where I had a bit of breakfast, unpacked, repacked and then headed to the airport for a short flight to Zanzibar.

We flew Coast Air, a single prop plane with 12 passenger seats. I have been in (and might I add piloted) a twin seat plane, but this was my first time on a plane like this. We boarded the plane and there was an extra passenger, so somebody had to sit in the front next to the pilot. It should have been me, but some bratty little child scooped up the seat. I shot visual daggers toward the back of her head for sometime and decided then and there that I did not like her. The view was gorgeous and we flew low – about 1300 feet – over the water, which was dotted with little islands and coral reefs. Twenty minutes later, we arrived in Zanzibar, got in a taxi and headed across the island to Jambiani Beach.

The drive from the airport to Jambiani Beach lasts little over an hour and goes through some gorgeous areas, including the Jozani Forest, where we managed to see a tree full of red colobus monkeys. By the time I realized I wanted a picture, it was too late and we were too far. The road seemed to go on forever and finally we arrived at our destination, the Blue Oyster Hotel. It is a charming, quiet and completely relaxing place set on the edge of the Indian Ocean, protected from big waves by the coral reef about a kilometer or so off shore. The water is warm and in every shade of blue imaginable. Palm trees rustle in the breeze and there is nothing more to do than sit in the sun with a book, walk down the beach or nap in the hammock. I did what anyone would do, I ordered myself a Stoney Tangawizi (a ginger cola) and lounged in the sun as the cool breeze blew off the Indian Ocean saying “welcome to Africa!”

The Iraq Diaries (Part 10)

January 1, 2011

Oh what a night! And day...

Yesterday, we arrived in a cold and rainy Dohuk. It was the only day with not perfect weather so no complaints at all… We wandered around town, which was the most uninteresting place we had been on the trip. We strolled through the market which was all around our hotel and made plans for the night. We would go to Dream City, the amusement park we had seen from the taxi and bring in the New Year doing something fun. We lounged around the room, took naps and decided to head to Dream City around 7pm. We were bored. The first time we had been bored the entire trip. We got ourselves a taxi and headed for what we had been told was the Disneyland of Iraq. Lonely Planet, which is getting more and more on my nerves, says “Dohuk’s most popular attraction is Dream City, a large amusement park/resort with a towering Ferris wheel and other thrill rides, plus a video arcade, bowling, swimming, restaurants, hotels and vacation homes. The place really gets cranking (who says “cranking” anymore??) on Thursday and Friday nights, when local women turn out in their colorful traditional dresses.” It sounded perfect. It was Friday night and New Years Eve. We were guaranteed a fun and interesting time.

We arrived at a shopping center with an amusement park behind it. It was raining. We went to go inside and discovered we needed to pay an entry fee. Not much, but enough to make us ask what rides were open. Turns out, there were no rides open, just the arcade and for 1500 Iraqi Dinar (about $1) we could go in and hang out in the arcade. We declined and decided to check out the shopping area where we thought we might find a restaurant or bar.

The shopping area turned out to be nothing more than a watered-down Walmart and uncomfortably full of people buying oversized cans of shaving cream and boxes of cereal. I decided to make the most of it and look for the Iraqi football team shirt I had been looking for since we arrived. There were football jerseys from Milan, Barcelona, Manchester United, Ajax and others, but not a single one for Iraq. When I would ask for them, people looked at me as though I asked if their mothers were prostitutes. I was just asking for a shirt. Again, I hit the same dead end and I left shirtless. We decided we had had enough and spotted Dophuks only 5-star hotel across the street and made a mad dash across the almost non-existent Friday night traffic and into the hotel. We were stopped at the entrance. I asked for he restaurant and was told it was closed for a private party. I asked if we could just have a drink and was told it was not possible. I asked where we would go and we were given an address on Nohadra Road, which he told us what “THE” place to go for pubs and clubs.

We arrived on Nohandra, and there it was, the one and only bar we saw during our entire trip. We went in and ordered beers. Not just any beer, but super yummy Lebanese beer, Almaaza. We were also told the bar would close at nine. We had one hour. And we made the most of it. We toasted and reflected and talked about the trip while ordering drink after drink before they kicked us out. And all too soon, it was closing time. Yes, we shut down the bar in Iraq at the wild hour of 21:00. There was nothing open except a restaurant and so we went, had some food, our last kebab of the trip and headed back to the hotel for some sleep.

We got to the hotel and met a group of Czech people (three guys and a girl) who were also staying there. They had met “a really cool Iraqi guy upstairs” who had invited them and us (they heard there were other foreigners in the hotel) up to his room for a New Years party. An hour later, we headed up to room 210 and found a seat on one of the twin beds. And that is how we brought in New Years, two Americans, four Czechs and an Iraqi guy named Abdul. It was a great evening. We bibded our time until midnight drinking more Lebanese beer and then it was onto the “Industrial Strength Jordanian Whiskey” which was little more than glorified paint thinner. It was then that we got on the subject of Abdul wating to go to San Diego which resulted in the following exchange between him and I:

“I am planning on going to San Diego”

“San Diego is amazing. I used to live there. And when you go to San Diego, you must go to Tijuana”

“No way, man, Mexico is too dangerous.”

“You do realize you are living in Iraq, right?"

"Yes, but I will get killed if I go to Mexico."

"Really?"

I thought it was funny that someone in what most of us think as one of the most dangerous countries in the world is actually scared of Mexico. I told him those incidents of horrific crimes were confined to certain areas and that Tijuana would be ok.

This morning, there was a knock at the door. It was Abdul. He had promised to go with me to the market to find an Iraqi football shirt. He said he knew where to get one and soon Preston and I were tagging along as he dragged us from store to store, basically reliving the same quest I had been on for the entire trip. Finally, we were directed to a little place on a nondescript alley of the market and found the shirt. It was about five dollars and Abdul bought it for me as a gift. And it came with matching Iraqi football team shorts!

It was soon time for Preston and I to go, so Abdul offered to drive us to the garage for a taxi to the border. We carried our luggage a few blocks to his truck and we were on our way to the taxi stand, which turned out to be just around the corner from our hotel. Abdul negotiated a price for us to the border and a few minutes later, we were speeding towards Turkey. 

Getting into Iraq was easy, calm and relaxed. Getting out was another story. To get out Iraq, you have to take a taxi to the border. When you get out of the taxi, you are bombarded by drivers to take you across the border. Suddenly our bags were being grabbed by countless people, with each person pointing in a different direction. Prices were shouted out and finally we settled on one that we felt was not only giving us the best deal, but made us feel the most secure.

From there, we had to go into the immigration office and push and shove our way to the front of the line. My 3 ½ years in India served me well and I was in front of the window in no time. It took us about thirty minutes or so to get our passports back and then we were loaded into the car and driven to the next part of the border crossing, the car inspection. We got into the line and we sat there. We sat some more. Then a little longer. Finally, we decided to go into the duty free shop to kill some time. And suddenly, there it was, the M&M’s stand. I have been craving them since arriving in Turkey and they are pretty impossible to find. And now it was like the mothership of M&M’s had landed just for me. A bag of each and I was on my way.

By the time we left, the car had reached the inspection site and everything was being unloaded and counted. Extra cartons of cigarettes out driver was trying to smuggle across the border were tossed in the bin. We passed the inspection and drove out of Iraq, across the river and then into Turkey. Now the real wait would begin.

Getting passports taken care of was no problem. What slows everything up, is that every item has to be removed from the car and scanned via an x-ray machine. This took several minutes per car, and longer for trucks. All in all, the border crossing back took us about three or so hours. Not so bad. A little while later we were on the bus to Mardin and tomorrow, we get our flight home.

I can’t believe the trip to Iraq is finished. For now…

The Iraq Diaries (Part 9)

December 31, 2010

Last night, we had a pretty relaxing evening. We went to Pasha Café for another nargile, but they were out of fresh grapefruit so we had a normal one while watching some Jackie Chan movie in the smoky café. We had a last walk through the empty streets in the early Sulaymaniya evening, my stomach doing tiny flips thanks to too much nargile. Hard to believe that tonight is it, our last night in Iraq.

Today, we left our hotel at about 5:30 this morning and got a taxi to the garage so we could hire a car to Erbil, where we would spend New Years Eve. We decided to do this as Erbil is only a few hours from the border and the bus company office is there. We had tried to email them for information about getting across the border and for the bus schedule, but have so far received no reply, so we decided to go to their office. Our initial goal was to find a taxi that would take us to Erbil without going into Arab controlled Iraq. Yesterday, while walking around in Sulaymaniya, an Iraqi guy started talking to us and warned us not to go to Iraq. I asked him to repeat what he said since I was pretty sure I heard wrong. Again he said “Don’t go to Iraq” to which I replied “I think we are already in Iraq.” Then he said, “Don’t go to Iraq. You die. Iraq very bad” as he drew his finger across his neck which seems to be the universal sign language for death. We told him we had no intention of going to the “bad” part of Iraq and he seemed a bit happy and then went on his way.

So we got a car to Erbil and by 6am we were on our way. It was a drizzly morning and I passed the time looking out the window, snapping pictures here and there while Preston listened to music and tried to sleep. Once again we passed through Kirkuk. I was hoping we would pull into town, stop for gas and we could have a quick peek, but we drove through without the driver even tapping on the brakes.

When we approached the outskirts of Erbil, we had a thorough security check which involved opening luggage and having everything checked. They even made Preston unpack his transparent bag of toiletries and the soldier looked at the toothpaste with obvious suspicion.  I was carrying nothing more interesting than three packages of “Family Sauce” which I got hooked on the first day at Istanbul Café. Since then, I have been eating it on everything.

We arrived in Erbil and took another taxi to the office of the bus company. It was just about 8am and they were still closed. It was drizzling, so we went into the little brick security hut and called the number on the card. We were informed by a cranky man who informed me it was 8am, that the office was closed since it was Friday and he was not sure if a bus would go the next day or not and he wasn’t really sure why I was calling him and what I expected him to do. I told him this was the number on the hard and that I expected him to sort something out or give me some accurate information. I didn’t really get anywhere with him except learning that suddenly we needed to figure out a way across the border. We decided to get a taxi to Dohuk, a town quite close to the border and then figure it out from there. We were just picking up our things when there was a loud bang that to me, sounded like a small explosion and I saw that was left of the bus stand just a few meters away flying through the air in pieces. My first thought was that it had been a bomb. I didn’t see anything else and it seemed the only logical immediate reason as to the flying pieces of a bus stand.

Preston saw the whole thing and began chanting “Did you see that? Did you see that?” A car had lost control, ran off the road and through the bus stand. The bang we heard, we saw a few seconds later, was the car hitting the wall. It hit it so hard, that the car went through the wall and was half-way in the garden of the house on the other side. Then reality sunk in. We had a close call. We were just about 10 meters from the bus stand. If we had started walking 5 seconds earlier, or he had turned a micro-second earlier, we would have been killed. We stopped for a moment to take it in, then we got our things and walked to get a taxi. Again, I wanted to take pictures of the accident, but didn’t. The driver got out of the car and seemed perfectly ok. No blood, he was talking and two other guys took him into a house. We got our taxi and headed to the garage to arrange a car to Dohuk. It was only 8:30am and we already had a near-death experience. The day could only go up from there.

We arranged a shared taxi to Dohuk, were given what we thought was a fair price and soon we were off, near-death experiences behind us. I was a bit sad to be heading towards the border so soon. The trip so far had been excellent and I was and am not yet ready to return to Turkey. Again, I passed the time staring out the window, watching Iraq pass by, unaware that we had gone back into Arab-controlled Iraq.

And then I saw it. The sign of dread. The sign that read “Mosul 10 Kilometers.” Mosul was the place we had been most warned about. The one place every blog and every advisory post and every person in Iraq said we should avoid. When people mention it, they usually include words like “death”, “kidnapping”, “beheading” and several others one never wants to here in a sentence directed at them. According to Lonely Planet, “Mosul and Tal Afar was one of the last strongholds for Al-Qaeda in Iraq and other terrorist groups, making it one of the most dangerous cities on earth.” And we were driving right for it, less than 10 kilometers to go.

I was both scared and extremely excited. Preston and I had talked about wanting to go, but we knew it was impossible, absolutely out of the question, and suddenly, there we were. Mosul. We didn’t go into the heart of town, but we did skirt the edge.

It was a forbidding looking place. The whole area looked gray. Small plumes of black smoke rose here and there from what I think were trash fires. Each house and building had black flags flying and several of them had flags with faces I didn’t recognize and text I couldn’t read. I snapped a picture, but only one. I didn’t want to draw attention to us. All the warnings of kidnapping, beheadings and all the other dangers came rushing back. I wasn’t scared as much as full of adrenaline. I felt so alert and aware and alive. Maybe it sounds silly, but I wanted to stay, explore and check it out. I was ready for an adventure. But I stayed in the car, imagining myself a photojournalist, wandering the mean, angry streets of Mosul, snapping Pulitzer prize-winning photos that would ultimately land on the cover of Time or Newsweek.

We arrived at a security check which was far different than any other one we had seen previously. Until that moment, security stops ranged from a bump in the road with a soldier waving people through, to mini, toll-booth like places where cars were stopped and passports checked. The one in Mosul was a whole different animal. Heavily armed soldiers, barbed wire and blast walls lined our route through the check. Heavily armed vehicles waited at the side. We slowly crept our way through. In the middle of the checkpoint, the road bent 90 degrees to the left and there was more of the same. I was desperate to take pictures, but resisted the urge. We needed to head towards the border in about 24 hours and I wasn’t taking any chances.

We made it through the checkpoint and there was a part of me that had hoped for a bit more drama. We could at least have been taken out of the car, searched and questioned. It would have made for a better story, but we made it through safe, which is the important thing.

The drive from the checkpoint to Dohuk was beautiful and uneventful. It was somewhere between Mosul and Dohuk that we realized tomorrow is January 1. Would the border be open? We didn’t know. Should we head to Turkey immediately and get across the border? We weren’t sure. The driver called a friend of his who spoke about 3 words of English and we tried to find out if the border was open or not, but he was no help. All he heard was “border” and that meant extra fare for his friend who then kept asking u if he could take us to the border. We finally decided to put a security check to some informative use and asked a soldier at the next stop. He assured us the border will be open tomorrow and that there will be no problems. Great! Maybe. Maybe he was wrong. We decided to take our chances and stop in Dohuk.

Like the other trips, the taxis left from a designated garage and then dropped us off in what always seemed to be deserted fields or the side of some unknown road, leaving us to fend for ourselves.  The only difference in Dohuk, was that it was raining. We were left on the side of the road, not a restaurant or anything but a park nearby. The entrance of the park provided a bit of shelter from the rain, but it was on the opposite side of the park. Fortunately it was not so large and we were soon out of the rain and digging out the Lonely Planet for possible hotel tips and a map just so we knew where the heck we were.

A policeman came over and took us inside a heated hut so we could sort everything out in warmth and fifteen minutes later, we were heading to Hotel Parleman in the middle of downtown Dohuk. On the way to the hotel, we spotted an amusement park in the distance, and as I am powerless against the gravitational pull of a rollercoaster, we will be going there tonight.

What a day. And it is just noon.