Travel and the Middle East

In the early months of 1981, our honeymoon plans were in flux.  We had already moved up our wedding date closer to my Naval Academy graduation and conflicting wedding commitments with respective classmates along with scheduled knee surgery made a formal honeymoon trip unattainable.  This all led to a dramatic, and unforgotten, prenuptial promise, “We’ll travel! I promise! We’re gonna travel the world!”

Before kids, we often made travel plans where Leigh would come to visit me when my Navy ship pulled into some port.  These included Ft Lauderdale, St. Thomas, Quebec City, Canada, and Southampton, England.  In the Fall of 1983 after combat operations rescuing college students on the Caribbean Island of Grenada, my ship, the USS Independence (CV-62) bolted across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea to conduct strike ops following the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut.  While these are certainly not combat names the public gives much thought to anymore, I assure you for the 24-year-old kid who had never seen combat before it was unforgettably intense and became personal very quickly.  During this deployment several aircraft would be lost, including our Air Wing Commander Captain, Ed “Hunyack” Andrews who was fortunately rescued by friendly fishermen after dropping his payload on enemy positions.  After a robust 75 +/- days at sea, we had a scheduled port visit in Haifa, Israel where Leigh was planning to join me as I took a few days of leave over the Christmas holiday. 

At the time my father was working in the Pentagon and Leigh asked him if it was safe for her to travel to Israel. He assured her the State Department had no restrictions and he encouraged her to do so.  Her parents, on the other hand, were not so enthusiastic. Yet, hormones prevailed, and she made her way to Haifa.

We had a great visit which included driving to Jerusalem with another Navy couple.  Although our start was somewhat auspicious (we had to change a flat tire on the road to Jerusalem) we were not disappointed as we passed a sign that read, “Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ”.  Our excitement was natural and understandable as we made a mental note to stop and visit The Holy Manger Store on the way back.  Minutes later we passed another sign, this one bigger and with flashing lights that read, “The REAL birthplace of Jesus”.   We all looked at each other and laughed and continued our way to Jerusalem where we would leave with a beautiful hand-sewn 3’ x 4’ area rug that would greet guests in our homes for the next 35 years.

 On another day we kicked around Haifa on foot, by cabs, and by buses.  At one point we were standing on a street corner looking at a tourist map when one Teddy B’erry stopped to ask if we needed help.   The former WWII Scottish commando turned professor at the University of Haifa, took us under his wing for a walking tour before spending several hours in his loft drinking tea and getting a primer on Israel’s history, its challenges, and its fighting determination to defend its relatively recently attained independence.  Armed military soldiers traveling on public transportation and the frequent sound of fighter jets heading north toward the Lebanese border (approx. 22 miles to the north) were stark reminders of what life is like for a country at war.  It was the first time that we ditched the poolside/pub scene for a cultural dive into local history and it would plant a seed that would ultimately change our travel philosophy forever. Despite our best planning, this would not be the last time we’d vacation in a war zone. 

I have often thought of Prof. B’erry’s kindness as a snow globe, once you shake it up the little village springs to life in unexpected and surprising ways.  It’s always about the people we meet, whether fellow travelers or locals willing to share their lives and perspectives with us, this is what makes the travel so fascinating.  Later, we would grab on to Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno’s quote, “Fascism is cured by reading, and racism is cured by traveling” as an impetus for us to travel to new places. 

After Chris and Caity moved out of their college years and into the stage of self-sufficiency, my pre-nuptial promise started to show signs of life.  Epic tours of Ireland (2012), Hawaii (2014), Paris (2016), Tanzanian safari (2017), Italy (2018), Nepal/Tibet (2019), Argentina/Antarctica (2021), and Danube River Cruise (2022)  Well, looky-looky who’s walkin’-the-walk inside the McBride snow globe?

Nearly 40 years after Leigh’s bold move to join me in Haifa, we planned our most ambitious travel agenda to date.  A 26-day, 4-continent, 5-country tour that would begin in Istanbul, Turkey, and continue to Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco, followed by a family wedding in Cancún, Mexico.

After 3 days touring Istanbul (and acquiring a replacement welcome rug to greet guests in our home), we arrived at the airport on the morning of  Saturday, October 7^th,  as Hamas militants were attacking Israeli communities.  Our early afternoon flight from Istanbul to Amman Jordan would fly directly over the action.  We had a sense this attack was a big deal, but the gravity of the situation hit us hard once we landed in Amman and met our driver.  Excitedly, waving his phone over his head, “I was tracking you on Flight Aware!  As soon as you crossed into Israel I was “Oh! Boy!  I hope they make it.” 

Gulp.

Once we reached the hotel in Amman, Omar, our Jordanian guide for the next 5 days, brushed off the news.  “We’re used to this.  It happens every few years…it will be over in a few days.”

Honestly, he wasn’t very convincing.  While a bit apprehensive that Saturday evening as we joined our tour group, Leigh and I agreed the one thing we would heavily rely on was greed, perhaps the most reliable predictor of human behavior.  If there was a threat to the tourist industry that either the Jordanian Travel Ministry (and its dependency on US tourist dollars) and/or our tour company Abercrombie & Kent (whose reputational self-interests would not be served if anything happened to the 6 American and 3 Australian travelers in this group) felt we should cut short our visit, we’d follow suit.  So, we chilled.

After several days down south in Aqaba (on the Red Sea), Wadi Rum, and Petra regions, we headed back north toward the Dead Sea for a float and a visit to where St John reportedly baptized Jesus.  While riding the wifi-served bus, I curiously looked up to see just how far from the action we were:

72 miles to the Gaza Strip! 

Not as close as to the battle lines as we were during our 1983 Haifa visit, yet we were certainly “aware”.  Depending on the source, the missile being fired from Gaza had ranges of anywhere from 15 to 150 miles.  Honestly, it felt a little different from that point on.  The fairly constant traffic of texts, emails, and Facebook posts was both annoying and comforting. Everybody breathed a sigh of relief once we crossed into Egyptian airspace on our way to Cairo and points south for the balance of our tour. 

Despite all the geo-political noise swirling around during our trip, it was the people we met and the stories they told that stood out in our minds.  Omar, our Jordanian guide, raised Roman Catholic, walked away after visiting Rome and seeing what he described as, “the gross hypocrisy of the Vatican and its leaders”.  He fasted daily and has found peace through his developing Islamic faith.  Is there anything more universally shared than a parent’s concern for his 2 ½-year-old daughter’s “iPad addiction”?

In Egypt, we had the good fortune of touring with one of the top Egyptologists whose mere presence gained us special treatment from other guides and vendors throughout our tour.  After 5 minutes of his pre-apology, here is a short video of Sharif getting off the bus to a swarm of vendors clamoring to be one of two chosen by him to ride along on our boat to the next Temple. 

Peter, 75, and Amanda, 67, are Australian and embarked on a 44-day world tour.    You could tell they were newlyweds, holding hands and snuggling like new lovers do.  We learned that Peter, who had a successful real estate financing and property management business, had spent the last 6 ½ years of his first wife’s life visiting her every day from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM in a dementia ward where she had been placed for early onset Alzheimer’s.  During 3-1/2 of those years, his mother was a patient in the same home.  I cannot even imagine.  You never know the strength other people have demonstrated to get to the point where they are when your paths cross unless you talk with them.  Play away, Peter and Amanda.

Our Moroccan driver, Fareed, was a young father with two children ages 5 and 2.  He always knew he wanted boys but has been flabbergasted by his head-over-heels relationship with his daughter, the eldest of the two. 

On our last full day in Marrakech, Morocco we took a tour of the ancient medina via motorcycle sidecars.  Our drivers were two 20-something-year-old college kids.  What unfolded was an incredibly candid discussion on race, religion, history, and, not surprisingly, the power of travel in breaking down barriers and bringing people to together.  My driver, Achmed (“Just call me Med!”), had visited Australia in 2022, touring and surfing in the same town where our daughter completed her semester abroad. Surfing?!? Arabs surf? I don’t know why I don’t think of surfing in Morocco; or even if I’ve ever thought of an Arab surfer before then.  So, there you go, another chink of my personal racism falls to the ground. Just as Unamuno had stated in the quote above, “Travel is a cure…”

40 years later the war I participated in and whose basis I can’t comprehend still rages, as it has for thousands of years.  I can’t fix that. Yet wherever I go I can chip away at my own ignorance and racist pre-conceived notions by simply engaging in conversation. It ain’t rocket science. It’s a big, wide-open world with so much to learn.  Hopefully, I’ll keep shaking snow globes while filling my passport with stamps, memories, and fresh perspectives.   

Travel has helped make me a better human.