Posts tagged: architecture

Amongst the Stacks

The Bibliotheca Alexandria was another of the reasons I wanted to visit Alexandria. Originally established in 283 BC, the Great Library of Alexandria was one of the first libraries open to the public and was a massive centre of knowledge. Copyright was of little interest back in the days when Alexandrian law demanded the confiscation and duplication of manuscripts arriving in the city by boat. Reading about Google’s scanning of the world’s libraries for its online catalogue, certain parallels come to mind.

The new library, the Bibliotheca Alexandria, was opened in 2002 and is an impressive piece of architecture. The sunlight reflecting off the metal discus that forms the library’s form reminded me a little of Libeskind’s Juedisches Museum in Berlin. Beside the entrance, a large, curving, ornamental wall is inscribed with characters from “every known” alphabet; I was limited to understanding those of Arabic, Cyrillic, Japanese and of course Latin, whilst ogling at the hieroglyphs, characters and pictograms of many other languages and civilisations.

Inside, the angled windows from the discus form of the building cast a wonderful light over the book-shelves and rows of desks. There is space to hold eight million books, over tenfold more than the 700,000 documents of the original Great Library; although the spaces on the shelves indicated its current stock is somewhat less. Pieces of typographic and calligraphic art are dotted around.

I sat with Alexandria’s studious souls, idling away the afternoon with books on Arabic calligraphy and Middle-Eastern & African linguistics. I miss my books.

Dome of the Rock

This Islamic shrine, part of the al-Aqsa complex, is the oldest Islamic building in the world, and one of the most holy sites in Islam outside of Saudi Arabia. I had seen pictures of it adorning the walls in the houses of many Muslim families that I have met whilst on this trip, although to the majority of them, they will never be able to visit it. For me, the blue tiles & intricate calligraphy brought back memories of the mosques of Esfahan in Iran, my first real experience of a Muslim country.

Israeli police patrol inside the site, and it is only accessible to non-Muslims for an hour a day. Access is via the same complex as the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s most important sites. If you are Muslim, access is limited by other means. Most citizens of Arab countries would not be able to visit it due to the travel restrictions surrounding Israel. If you fall into the category of a Palestinian holding Israeli ID, then you can live in, or travel to, Jerusalem (and therefore access the al-Aqsa complex). However, Israeli police do sometimes limit access to the site; just the other day, the Old City itself was closed to Palestinians. Israelis and tourists were allowed to enter.

For Palestinians holding Palestinian ID, things get a little more complicated. Access to Jerusalem from the West Bank involves crossing a checkpoint, due to the existence of the (illegal) separation wall. To cross this checkpoint, one must have the right papers. Authorisation to travel to Jerusalem is often granted for Fridays only — the holy day for Muslims. For males to obtain this authorisation, they must be 55 years old.

And once authorisation has been gained, there is the issue of actually traveling there. On a Friday, the queues at the checkpoints surrounding Jerusalem are horrendous, as people try to reach their place of prayer. Qalandia—the checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem—in particular, is a very unpleasant experience. People often queue for hours, in a very hot, pushy, humiliating environment.

To Beirut

The bus from Damascus to Beirut first slogs its way up to the Anti-Lebanon mountainside, then creeps through the long stretch of “no-man’s land” between the Syrian and Lebanese border posts, before winding along the roads surrounding Lebanese ski-resorts and snaking its way back down to sea level to this troubled capital.

Along the mountain roads there were several army checkpoints, the soldiers huddling near to their wooden cabins in between stopping vehicles. I had grown used to the frequent sight of guns displayed by Syrian police, army and mukhabarat, but here, things seemed to take on a different dimension. The checkpoints here seemed fiercer than their Syrian counterparts; arriving into Beirut, there was a tank positioned under a flyover. But then Lebanon has a much more troubled, recent past. It was only three and a half years ago that the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War gripped the south of the country, and southern Beirut was targeted. The evidence of fighting in the capital is visible nearly everywhere. Bullet-holes pock-mark buildings, whilst other still stand derelict, bearing the scars of shelling, presumably from the Lebanese Civil War.

But the city is undergoing huge amounts of construction; Downtown has been completely renovated, and the shell of the Holiday Inn, which was under heavy sniper fire in the civil war, is now flanked by other hotel giants.

Before I had come here, I had heard people speak of another war with Israel being “imminent” — it is only a month away, I had been told — but that doesn’t seem to stop the investment. Talking with more people in Lebanon, there are those who say that “Israeli troops are massing on the Southern border, and they have called up their reservists”, but then others who say that this talk has been going on for a year or so. “There will always be an invasion next month.” (Neither Hezbollah, nor Israel, would be particularly keen on a war right now. If one comes, it is likely to be due to Israel’s strategy on the Iranian nuclear issue, and Hezbollah’s ties with the country.)

On many counts, Beirut does seem to have it all. The city sits on the Mediterranean, is flanked by mountains (with ski-resorts less than an hour’s drive away), and not far north from the capital is some renowned hiking. Downtown & Achrafiyeh are definitely Western-facing; the old souk district is awash with occidental brands and shops, the clock-tower in the Place d’Étoile bears the Rolex brand. The student population around the Hamra & Ras Beirut districts create a little niche of cool little cafés, and in Gemmayzeh there are some very nice bars. The cuisine is divine. People are friendly, although a little too m’as-tu vu for my liking in certain districts. After having spent the last few months in Damascus, I felt much more comfortable in the bustling, populaire Muslim quarters.

Despite the mass of concrete, I find the city has an aesthetic charm.

Basing myself here is not inconceivable…

Seven Hills

I love cities built on hills. Amman’s Jebel Hussein appears as a mass of haphazard grey or ochre, concrete buildings, each piled upon another. I can’t help but compare it to the ordered rows of red-bricked terrace houses of Sheffield’s industrial-revolution period, working class houses. A similar demographic, but a very different aesthetic.

Yet rather than being attracted to the city with the promise of work in the factory, the people here were forced from their land in what-was-then Palestine. Push-, rather than pull-, migration, I suppose.

The New Downtown of Amman

Crossing any border involving Syria seems to also involve smuggling. The driver of the shared taxi I took handed me several packets of duty-free cigarettes to stuff into my jacket as we were waved through into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Maybe he felt I owed him one for the wait that was incurred once the staff issuing the visas saw the Iranian stamps in my passport. It promptly disappeared out back for half an hour before they granted me leave to enter the country.

Arriving into Amman from Damascus initially came as quite a culture shock. The place is undergoing a huge amount of construction. The skeletons of buildings take form, cranes dominate the skyline, and everything seems all very new. I had grown used to the absence of occidental chains in Syria. McDonalds, Starbucks, Toni & Guy; Amman has it all, so to speak.

The military also reflect the Western dollars in the country. The army & guards in Syria are usually quite a scruffy affair, brandishing tattered old machine guns, and often in an equally tattered old leather jacket. Not so in Jordan. The army here keep their boots shined and their fire-power reflects the $464 million of US economic assistance they receive. (2006 figure.) The machine guns were of the M-16 variety (as opposed to that of a Kalashnikov), and it wasn’t unusual to see a jeep with an oh-my-god-look-at-the-size-of-that gun bolted to the roof. No messing here.

The place is full of contrasts, and there is still a lot of poverty. These new developments I speak of sit on one side of the hill, and the other side houses the pre-fab buildings of the refugees and the poor. Somewhere in the middle sits Downtown, where its older buildings house (fake) DVD shops, jewellers galore and some pleasant little humus joints & narghile cafés, along-side the odd Roman ruin.