MY BIRTHDAY FROM HELL

A young travel journalist was recently whining on his blog of how lonely he expected to be on a three week trip to America. In response, I felt like saying you don’t take your best pal to work do you? So if travel writing is your chosen metier, please fasten your safety belt and stop complaining.

In fact there is a huge gulf between travel writing and travel journalism. The former sees you away - often for months at a time - in an alien society with no infrastructure other than your wits. The reverse is a quick press-trip with colleagues to Majorca, or wherever, when you’ve barely closed the door and you’re back again.

Real travel writing by its nature, is a solitary occupation as the authors of great narratives will confirm. Missing home and dining alone are inevitable downsides and while grateful for a capacity to be alone, I find that spending your birthday without a companion exacerbates the sense of social isolation.

In a lifetime of travel writing I`ve awakened on 17th October in Sydney, London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Nairobi, Dublin, Tahiti, New York, Marrakesh, Muscat, Provincetown and Algiers. I`ve also seen out three birthdays in Pakistan: my 39th up the Khyber, my 40th in Islamabad and my 41st in Sukkur, an historic town on the river Indus in Sindh.

Knowing I’d be alone in Sukkur, I was determined not to let it get me down. I bought a big bag of sweets for local children that morning and normally skipping lunch, I opted to celebrate with a meal - albeit it in my room as it was Ramadan.

I’d ordered catfish masala, but since my air conditioning wasn’t working and the electric fan had stopped, I called reception to send up an electrician.

In a few moments a sharp knock heralded a short man in navy overalls holding a giant screw-driver. ‘Electric,’ he said and coming in, he switched the fan on, then off, spun the blades (its cage was missing) announced ‘fan heat,’ and picking it up out he marched out again.

A second knock had signalled a waiter with my lunch and taking the tray, I placed it carefully on the bed and pulled up a chair, but before I could take a mouthful, there was another rap on the door. No surprise that it was the electrician.

This time he kicked off his sandals and stepping over the tray, he stood on my pillow and placing a foot against the bed-head, he yanked the air conditioner off the wall, splitting its timber frame and showering my lunch with dust balls.

‘Check,’ he said and taking it into his arms, he had disappeared down the corridor.

Moments later he was back dragging the fan through the door which I had left ajar in anticipation.

‘Wire,’ he declared and kneeling down, he plunged his giant screw-driver into the wall socket.

‘Don't do that!’ I shouted, picturing an incinerated corpse.

‘Problem fix,’ he said and flicking a switch, the fan had started up like a turbo-jet, blowing my birthday curry all over the bedspread.

Images: www.copix.co.uk

My official press pass to visit Zambia in 1994.

Breakfast with Bedouin while researching my first book The Gulf States and Oman (1978).

With houseboat children on the Indus river in Sukkur on 17th October 1981.

17th OCTOBER IS INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR THE ERADICATION OF POVERTY

DATES ARE THE FERTILIZERS OF OUR KNEES...runs an old Arab saying

The date palm is considered to be the world's oldest tree cultivated by man. Date-farming in mentioned on Mesopotamian clay tablets from 3,000 BC while the Holy Qur'an has a reference to Mary sustaining herself on dates while birthing Jesus.

Now served on Arab airline menus, dates were once the basic diet for Bedouin living in the Middle East and North Africa. Their sticky golden fruit, a rich source of carbohydrate, fibre and minerals, was the eaten by both men and animals.

But while its fruit was their staple diet, the date palm had a myriad uses for the hardy nomads who always left one family member in charge of the trees during their annual migration.

The massive trunk, split in two and laid end to end, became an effective canal for conveying water to the oasis while the palm fronds, staked out in the sand, became an enclosure for domestic stock and before oil brought undreamt of riches, Bedouin of the Arab Gulf states lived in barastis - huts made from woven palm branches. Arabian Sea fishermen used a shasha canoe, likewise made of lashed date palm fronds.

Felling a date palm remains almost sacred act with nothing wasted when it crashes to earth.

Raked out and combed, the fibrous heart is made into brooms and woven into ropes, stuffing for cushions, food and prayer mats. The wood chips are gathered for use as fuel; even the stones are saved and crushed for animal fodder ---in Arabian Sands the great explorer Wilfred Thesiger writes how he once carelessly threw a date-stone into his camp-fire and his Bedouin guide leaned over and picked it out.

While wealthy Bedouin now drive Land Cruisers and communicate on mobile phones, the date palm remains deeply rooted in social customs among rural families. In the interior of Oman palms continue to count as bridal dowry and here, as well as in the Maghreb, a man's wealth is still judged on the number of his trees.

While most trees cannot survive in the desert, liking sandy soil and able to endure temperatures of 50c, sees the date palm flourish with a healthy tree capable of producing an annual crop of up to 90 kilos. Some of the world's biggest date plantations line the Shatt al Arab waterway in southern Iraq, whose wall-to-wall palms were remarked on by Ibn Battuta on in 1327:

'……… we travelled on waterways through an uninterrupted garden of …..overshadowing palm groves to the right and left, with traders sitting in the shade of the trees, selling bread, fish, dates, milk and fruit.'

Date palms are dioecious meaning they have male and female organs borne on separate individuals of the same species - male palms produce pollen and female palms bear the fruit. Thousands of years ago natural pollination was carried out by the wind, birds and insects, but in commercial cultivation, each palm is fertilised by hand by an agile pollinator.

Among scores of different types of dates, the rich, golden, almost translucent variety known as deglat al nour is generally considered to be the ‘Queen of Dates’. The odd thing is that while Arabs enjoy dates throughout the year, in western societies they generally only appear at Christmas.

A Tunisian date-farmer checks his crop in Nefta.

Dates and coffee are served in Arab society.

A pollinator climbs a date-palm in Morocco.

Source: www.copix.co.uk