About MW2ME

I noticed the apple-bird towards the end of our dinner in Damascus. It was three quarters of an apple sliced at various locations in particular ways such that when folded up and frayed out, it looked like a bird.

Its creator sat in the corner of the restaurant, wearing a bow-tie and simply sipping on tea. The other waiters, who at this point already considered me somewhat of a freak-show attraction because I'm so damn white and I can speak Arabic, introduced the man as some kind of a magician. They were all gathered around our table and had been chatting with me, and the man came to join us at the table.

"Do you know the reason behind this?", he asked me in Fusha Arabic, the high-browed language of writing and reading in the Middle East, as he picked up a wine glass and tapped another one with it, making a toast.

"Nope" I answered.

"You, as a person, have five senses, yeah? There's seeing, and hearing, and tasting, and touching, and smelling, right?

Well, with the experience of drinking wine, you use four out of the five senses. You have the obvious one, 'taste,' from the wine itself; you also have 'smell', when you put the glass up to your lips and your nose is in it. Then there's 'touch', such as when you hold the glass like this," he held up the glass, now peering through its body at me, distorting his eye into some warped and twisted globe.

"And 'sight' is obviously involved in drinking wine, too--the different colors of wine, the quality or depth of those colors," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Now, The only one missing is....", he held out his palm in my direction as an invitation to respond.

"Hearing," I answered, and, seeing where this was headed, I raised my glass to his.

"That's right," he said, "and that, my friend, is why we do this." He tapped his glass to mine. "Kaysak."

"Kaysak," I said.

Traveling to different countries, seeing different cultures, and meeting different people has always been, for me, a total assault on all five fronts: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. Everything is different, and when you're lost and unfamiliar with a location, or a people, or traditions, etc., the best and worst in people are much more easily noticeable.

It's because you're totally dependent on them, really: To give you directions to places when they see you wandering around aimlessly with a map in your hands, three friends crowded around the small print, a matter further complicated by street names that contain an inexcusable number of consecutive consonants (if the streets are named at all), and where sometimes it really does matter if you just happen to wander off into the wrong part of town...

Or you depend on them to translate for you, or to not rip you off on a taxi ride price or the price of a souvenir, or whatever. This dependence on other people can really accentuate the "toasts" in life; and, in a way, being totally vulnerable can make you appreciate the goodness in people that much more.

This experience, like wine, seems to get better and better with time, the more often I do it.

I am an American living in Cairo, Egypt, doing research on Islamic Philosophy. This blog is intended to be a chronicle of my experiences there and also in the surrounding region.

Iskandar