The Best American Travel Writing 2011 (11 page)

Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul ... then, I account it high time to go to sea ... If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

I went around the world. Our itinerary wasn't fixed—a tramp freighter goes where the cargo is. The
Fernbrook
ended up taking me from New York to Charleston, Panama, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, Sumatra, Phuket (then still an endless white beach with not a building on it), Penang, Port Swettenham, India, and, as it was still called, Ceylon.

The final leg—Colombo to New York, around the Cape of Good Hope—took thirty-three days, longer than expected owing to a Force 10 gale in the South Atlantic. I remember the feeling of barely controlled panic as I took my turns at the helm, the unwelcome knowledge that thirty-one lives depended on my ability to steer a shuddering, heaving 520-foot ship straight into mountainous seas. When the next man relieved me, my hands were too cramped and shaky to light a cigarette. Even some of the older guys, who'd seen everything, seemed impressed by this storm: "Maybe ve sink, eh?" one winked at me, without detectable mirth.

They were Norwegian, mostly, and some Germans and Danskers (sorry, Danes). The mess crews were Chinese. I was awoken on the first cold (November, as it happened) morning by a banging on my cabin door and the shout "Eggah!" It took me a few days to decipher. Eggs. Breakfast.

This was long before onboard TVs and DVD players. Modern freighters, some of which carry up to twelve passengers, come with those, plus three squares a day, plus amenities: saunas, pools, video libraries. If I embarked today as a passenger aboard a freighter, I'd endeavor not to spend the long days at sea—and they are long—rewatching
The Sopranos.
I prefer to think that I'd bring along a steamer trunk full of Shakespeare and Dickens and Twain. Short of taking monastic vows or trekking into the Kalahari, a freighter passage might just offer what our relentlessly connected age has made difficult, if not impossible: splendid isolation.

You can't tell what's aboard a container ship. We carried every kind of cargo, all of it on view: a police car, penicillin, Johnnie Walker Red, toilets, handguns, lumber, Ping-Pong balls, and IBM data cards. A giant crate of those slipped out of the cargo net and split open on the deck as we were making ready to leave San Francisco. A jillion IBM data cards, enough to figure out
E = mc
²
.
It fell to me to sweep them into the Pacific. I reflected that at least they made for an apt sort of ticker tape as we left the mighty, modern U.S. in our wake and made for the exotic, older-world Far East.

The crossing took three weeks. I didn't set foot onshore in Manila until four days after we landed. As the youngest man onboard, I had drawn a series of cargo-hold watches. My job, ostensibly, was to prevent the stevedores from stealing, a function I performed somewhat fecklessly. On the last day in Manila, after I'd stood a seventy-two-hour watch, another huge crate slipped its straps and crashed to the deck. Out poured about five thousand copies of
The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant
intended for Manila's public schools. The stevedores seemed confused as to whether these were worth stealing. By now I was beyond caring. I yawned and told the foreman, "Good book. Go for it."

At sea in those latitudes, temperatures on the ship's steel decks could reach 115 degrees. During lunch breaks, I'd climb down the long ladder to the reefer (refrigerated) deck at the bottom of Number Two Hold. There were mounds, hillocks, tons—oh, I mean
tons
—of Red Delicious apples from Oregon. I would sit on top in the lovely dark chill, munching away, a chipmunk in paradise. One day I counted eating eight. I emerged belching and blinking into the heat, picked up my hydraulic jackhammer, and went back to chipping away at several decades of rust and paint.

I remember standing in the crow's nest as we entered the misty Panama Canal, and the strange sensation as the four-thousand-ton ship rose higher and higher inside the lock. I remember dawn coming up over the Strait of Malacca; ragamuffin kids on the dock in Sumatra laughing as they pelted us with bananas; collecting dead flying fish off the deck and bringing them to our sweet, fat, toothless Danish cook to fry up for breakfast. I remember sailing into Hong Kong harbor and seeing my first junk; steaming upriver toward Bangkok, watching the sun rise and set fire to the gold-leafed pagoda roofs; climbing off the stern down a wriggly rope ladder into a sampan, paddling for dear life across the commerce-mad river into the jungle, where it was suddenly quiet and then suddenly loud with monkey-chatter and bird-shriek, the moonlight lambent on the palm fronds.

Looking back, as I often do, these ports of call seem to me reachable only by freighter. Mine was a rusty, banged-up old thing, but I suppose there's no reason a shiny new container ship wouldn't do the trick.

FROM
Vanity Fair

I
WANTED TO KNOW ALL ABOUT EVE.
"Our grandmother Eve?" asked Abdullah Hejazi, my boyish-looking guide in Old Jidda. Under a glowing Arab moon on a hot winter night, Abdullah was showing off the jewels of his city—charming green, blue, and brown houses built on the Red Sea more than a hundred years ago. The houses, empty now, are stretched tall to capture the sea breeze on streets squeezed narrow to capture the shade. The latticed screens on cantilevered verandas were intended to ensure "the privacy and seclusion of the harem," as the Lebanese writer Ameen Rihani noted in 1930. The preservation of these five hundred houses surrounding a souk marks an attempt by the Saudis, whose oil profits turned them into bling addicts, to appreciate the beauty of what they dismissively call "old stuff."

Jidda means "grandmother" in Arabic, and the city may have gotten its name because tradition holds that the grandmother of all temptresses, the biblical Eve, is buried here—an apt symbol for a country that legally, sexually, and sartorially buries its women alive. (A hard-line Muslim cleric in Iran recently blamed provocatively dressed women for earthquakes, inspiring the
New York Post
headline
SHEIK IT
!) According to legend, when Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, they went their separate ways, Adam ending up in Mecca and Eve in Jidda, with a single reunion. (Original sin reduced to friends with benefits?) Eve's cemetery lies behind a weathered green door in Old Jidda.

When I suggested we visit, Abdullah smiled with sweet exasperation. It was a smile I would grow all too accustomed to from Saudi men in the coming days. It translated into "No f—ing way, lady."

"Women are not allowed to go into cemeteries," he told me.

I had visited Saudi Arabia twice before, and knew it was the hardest place on earth for a woman to negotiate. Women traveling on their own have generally needed government minders or permission slips. A Saudi woman can't even report harassment by a man without having a
mahram
, or male guardian, by her side. A group of traditional Saudi women, skeptical of any sort of liberalization, recently started an organization called My Guardian Knows What's Best for Me. I thought I understood the regime of gender apartheid pretty well. But this cemetery bit took me aback.

"Can they go in if they're dead?" I asked.

"Women can be buried there," he conceded, "but you are not allowed to go in and look into it."

So I can only see a dead woman if I'm a dead woman?

No wonder they call this the Forbidden Country. It's the most bewitching, bewildering, beheading vacation spot you'll never vacation in.

Saudi Arabia is one of the premier pilgrimage sites in the world, outstripping Jerusalem, the Vatican, Angkor Wat, and every other religious destination, except for India's Kumbh Mela (which attracts as many as 50 million pilgrims every three years). Millions of Muslims flock to Mecca and Medina annually. But, for non-Muslims, it's another story. Saudi Arabia has long kept not just its women but its very self behind a veil. Robert Lacey, the Jidda-based author of
The Kingdom
and
Inside the Kingdom
, explains that only when revenues from the hajj pilgrims fell drastically, during the Depression, did the Saudis allow infidel American engineers to enter the country and start exploring for oil.

Before 9/11, Saudi Arabia was in fact gearing up to welcome, or at least accept, a trickle of non-Muslim visitors, dropping a handkerchief to the world. Crown Prince Abdullah—now the king—was a radical modernizer by Saudi standards. He wanted to encourage more outside contact and to project an image other than one of religious austerity (with bursts of terrorism). The Saudis had already cracked open the door slightly for some degree of cultural tourism. Leslie McLoughlin, a fellow at the University of Exeter's Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, led tours to the Kingdom in 2000 and 2001, and both groups included affluent and curious Jewish men and women from New York. But on 9/11 the passageway narrowed again as Saudi Arabia and the United States confronted the reality that Osama bin Laden and fifteen of the nineteen terrorist hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The news cut to the very character of the Saudi state. Back in 1744, the oasis-dwelling al-Saud clan had made a pact with Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi sect, which took an especially strict approach to religious observance. The warrior al-Sauds got religious legitimacy; the anhedonic Wahhabis got protection. To this day the Koran is the constitution of Saudi Arabia, and Wahhabism its dominant faith. The royals doubled down on the deal when Islamic fundamentalists took over the Grand Mosque, in Mecca, in 1979. Now, with bin Laden's attacks, the bargain the royals struck with the fundamentalists—allowing anti-Western clerics and madrassas to flourish and not cracking down on those who bankroll al-Qaeda and terrorism—had borne its poison fruit.

Three years after 9/11, in 2004, the Kingdom decided to give the tourism business another try, this time hiring a public relations firm to get things rolling. The website of the resulting Supreme Commission for Tourism was "a disaster," one Saudi official abashedly recalls, shaking his head. The site noted that visas would not be issued to an Israeli passport holder, to anyone with an Israeli stamp on a passport, or, just in case things weren't perfectly clear, to "Jewish people." There were also "important instructions" for any woman coming to the Kingdom on her own, advising that she would need a husband or a male sponsor to pick her up at the airport, and that she would not be allowed to drive a car unless "accompanied by her husband, a male relative, or a driver." Needless to say, there would be no drinking allowed—Saudi officials even try to enforce no-drinking rules on private jets in Saudi airspace, sometimes sealing the liquor cabinets. Finally, belying the fact that Arabs consider hospitality a sacred duty, there was the no-loitering kicker: "All visitors to the Kingdom must have a return ticket." After New York congressman Anthony Weiner kicked up a fuss, the anti-Semitic language on the website was removed.

Now, six years later, the Saudis are trying yet again. But they aren't opening their arms unless (with a few exceptions) you are part of a special tourist group. "No backpacking stuff," says Prince Sultan bin Salman, the tall and chatty former astronaut who is the president and chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities. "You know, high level," he goes on, and involving only "fully educated" groups.

You still have to accept all the restrictive rules. And it won't be easy getting in. Visas these days for Westerners are so scarce that even top American diplomats have a hard time obtaining them for family members. The Kingdom recoils at the thought of the culture clash that could be caused by an invasion of French girls in shorts and American boys with joints. A sign at the airport warns:
DRUG TRAFFICKERS WILL BE PUT TO DEATH
.

Saudis fret that the rest of the world sees them as aliens, even though many are exceptionally charming and welcoming once you actually breach the wall. They are sensitive about being judged for their Flintstones ways, and are quick to remind you of what happened to the shah of Iran when he tried to modernize too fast. Not to mention their own King Faisal, who was assassinated in 1975 (regicide by nephew) after he introduced television and public education for girls. This prince-and-pauper society has always had a Janus face. Royals fly to the South of France to drink, gamble, and sleep with Russian hookers, while reactionary clerics at home delegitimize women and demonize Westerners. Last winter, a Saudi prince found himself under arrest for allegedly strangling his servant in a London hotel. (He has pleaded not guilty.) The Kingdom didn't have widespread electricity until the 1950s. It didn't abolish slavery until the 1960s. Restrictions on mingling between unrelated members of the opposite sex remain severe. (Recently, a Saudi cleric advised men who come in regular contact with unrelated women to consider drinking their breast milk, thereby making them in a sense "relatives," and allowing everyone to breathe a sigh of relief.) Today, Saudi Arabia is trying to take a few more steps ahead—starting a coed university, letting women sell lingerie to women, even toning down the public beheadings. If you're living on Saudi time, akin to a snail on Ambien, the popular eighty-six-year-old King Abdullah is making bold advances. To the rest of the world, the changes are almost imperceptible.

The idea of seeing Saudi Arabia with the welcome mat out was irresistible—even when the wary Saudis kept resisting. I made plans for a Saudi vacation, knowing that the only thing more invigorating than ten days in Saudi Arabia would be ten days there as a woman. Actually, it would be two women: joining me was my intrepid colleague and trip photographer Ashley Parker. I was a little squeamish about boarding a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight with a cross on my forehead. (It was Ash Wednesday.) Some Saudi flights embark with an Arabic supplication, in the words of the Prophet Muhammad. The flight attendants—who are not Saudi, because it would be dishonorable for the airline to employ Saudi women—bring around baskets of Saudi newspapers. A glance at the headlines underscored the fact that we were in a time machine hurtling backward. One article in the English-language
Arab News
was titled "Carrying Dagger a Mark of Manliness." Another warned, "Women lawyers are not welcome in the Kingdom's courts." It was startling to see a thumbnail portrait of a female columnist—my counterpart—in which only her eyes were not concealed by a veil. Reading the airline magazine is like the moment in
The Twilight Tone
when you sense there's something slightly off about that picture-book town. The magazine is called
Ahlah Wasahldn
, meaning "Hello and Welcome," but the welcome seems to be to Versailles, Provence, and Belize. There's no hint that Saudi Arabia itself might be a destination.