I don’t think I can make generalizations about what I see here. All I’ve got is my specific story, so I’ll stick to that.
I’ve kind been a shut in the last couple days; I’ve gone out for food once and once for a walk. I think it’s just exhaustion; most of the rest of my time has been spent on sleep. In the days leading up to transit I was averaging 4 hours of sleep a night, and I got something like 3 hours in 30 getting here. So I’ve been bone-weary and hurting. Feeling better now though, I got a real meal for the first time since Houston, and that helps.
You know, I said I wouldn’t make any generalizations, but here’s one: This city is gorgeous. Not in a pure clean way, but in a lovely organic way. And the sheer scale of it keeps taking me by surprise. There are lots of small spaces created by twisty alleys and the like, but then you take a turn onto a throughfare and there are panoramas like that first photo. There’s a lot of dirt on everything here; it never rains to wash buildings away, and nobody has though of pressure washing, thank god, so buildings here are covered in dust and dirt.
(Aside: The 5AM call to prayer just rang out.) Earlier today, I was upstairs getting some tea (which felt great on my sore throat) and over loudspeakers from a nearby masque, a dude was leading prayers. And in what sounded like the middle of a sentence, he would just break into song for a measure or two, and then go back to talking. Completely acapella and spontaneous. He wasn’t much of a singer, but there was something beautiful about it, anyway. I was told once, by one of my professors in college, that the words of the Koran were so beautiful that there were often on the spot converts on hearing them. Which leads me to believe that that’s what the singing was. I could be wrong, though.
Then I went for a walk, just to get around and see the neighborhood a little bit. The architecture here is an odd mishmash of time periods when the country was flush and rubble. Seriously, there’s a lot of rubble from buildings torn down or fallen down. And again, there’s the scale of the place; it’s something I wasn’t struck by in any of the other big cities I’ve been to, but here the whole city is telling you it’s a big place. Tons of history. Lots of people.
There are lots of little struggles that fill up the day of someone like me, traveling in a country where I don’t speak the language. Getting food, for example. I have to just kind of point and hope for the best. Tea is easy; coffee also, plenty of that here. My money is holding up pretty well, although that may change as I eat more meals in the coming days. I think tomorrow may be a coding day; that way I can not have to worry about money so much. Although today was a coding day of sorts; I managed to get OAuth working for twitter on my blog, so the updates go to twitter and facebook again. Go me.
