Travel Tales

Khamis Mushayt, Saudi Arabia. January 27, 1995.

Friday morning prayers emanating from the mosque loudspeaker seemed to drone on forever. There were many extra worshippers this morning and they spilled out into the town square, bent in prostration towards Mecca.

My wife, Kathy, and I were perched in a second-floor restaurant overlooking the square, not to observe morning prayers, but to witness a public execution. The man sentenced to die in a few minutes would be one of 191 executions in 1995, still a morbid yearly record for Saudi Arabia.

West Battle Lake, Minnesota. August 1990.

During summer 1990, my wife, Kathy, and I were enjoying lake life in Minnesota and busy preparing for a second international teaching adventure. This time it would be Saudi Arabia. Having spent four years teaching in Colombia, we sloughed off questions from friends and family like, “Is it safe?” We had no idea our Andy Warhol moment and fifteen minutes of local fame was a “Breaking News” headline away.

Maasai Mara Game Park, Kenya. January 1-2, 1983.

You may have heard the vintage 1961 tune, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. A nocturnal sleep schedule for big cats might be true in a zoo. In the wilds of East Africa, lions are opportunistic hunters and roam widely after dark. During a low-budget, self-organized Kenyan safari, my travel buddy, Andy, and I joked about camping surrounded by wild animals. Had I looked into a crystal ball, the foreshadowing of a lion stalking me would have appeared in the orb’s cloudy mist. In reality, it was dead of night when the large-maned lion came so close, I heard him sniff the air.

Aleppo, Syria. November 25, 1982.

Amid the clatter and chatter of a massive Thanksgiving dinner hosted by American teachers from Damascus Community School, the stories of life and death under the Hafez al-Assad regime came rapid fire. I heard about body parts falling into the schoolyard from a nearby bombing, the bank official hung in public outside the downtown First Central Bank, and automatic gunfire echoing around the city every night. Plus Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLO) was arriving in two days. When it comes to the civil war in Syria, the atrocities heaped on its population hadn’t changed from the 1980s to today. Each teacher and family member had a small, emergency evacuation suitcase packed.

It was pumpkin pie time when I realized why an AK-47 had been pointed at my chest two days earlier. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.

East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. September 7, 1977.

Ready to cross over to East Berlin, I took a moment to snap a photo of the famed Checkpoint Charlie. The nondescript prefabricated shack was the last stop between the West (Allied controlled) and East (Soviet-controlled) Berlin. The Cold War was full on and the Berlin Wall, it’s most iconic scar, divided the city and the world. Just on the other side of the wall, a high-ranking East German spy with the codename, “Poet,” stood patiently, smoking a pipe. He was waiting for me.