-As seen in the Boston Globe-

Sed Ali digs his heels into the hindquarters of a small, gray, Arabian-style horse, trotting across the sand and weaving through a pack of dilapidated camels. Today Ali is providing a group of students with a guided tour of the great pyramids in Giza, a family business he’s been a part of since he was 6 years old. But government efforts to modernize tourism on the Giza plateau threaten to drive Ali and those like him out of business for good.

To protect the pyramids and other relics in Giza, Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities has put into action a dramatic re-envisioning of a visitor’s experience. Aimed to deter elements that may damage the world-famous site, the plan will transform the area’s wild-west industry of camel drivers, docents and peddlers into a carefully regulated and contained tourism complex by October 2009 according to officials.

“Without the camels, the place it will die,” said the 33-year-old Ali, whose family has done this work for three generations, “Where would we eat?”

Ali estimated that nearly 35,000 people in Giza depend on tourism to make a living, which for him equals just under $9,000 US per-year before a 25 percent tax on his income. When it became clear that their livelihoods were threatened, Gizans petitioned Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and chief architect of the plateau modernization effort.

“They wrote to me a bad letter,” said Hawass, a famed Egyptian archaeologist. “To the people with camels and horses, the pyramids are a plate of gold, and instead of polishing it, they shit on it.”

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Raymon stands curbside outside his shop in a purple t-shirt and jeans. His attention darts from flicking the ash off the end of his cigarette to coaxing tourists inside, promising extraordinary treasures at rock-bottom prices. The abundance of souvenir shops in Luxor, a modern Nile-side tourist mecca built around the ruins of ancient Thebes, suggests that in reality Raymon’s shelves upon shelves of perfume bottles, miniature pyramids and alabaster jars are decidedly humdrum. Nonetheless, it’s his livelihood and has sustained his family for more than 20 years. Less than a hundred yards away however, a government renovation project is poised to take it all away.

Egyptian construction crews are eight months underway on a endeavor to recreate Sphinx Avenue, a 1.8 mile long, 250 foot wide path that in 1300 B.C. connected the Karnak and Luxor temples. Aping the ancient Egyptians, swarms of predominantly-western tourists will stroll the path flanked by rows of replica sphinxes, just as they would a museum corridor. But in 2009, it will cut a swathe through a dozen blocks of homes, congregations and businesses, leaving the displaced no choice but to accept government compensation and move on.

“They will live in the street,” said Raymon, whose family name is being omitted to protect his identity. “Our government wants to get rid of all houses in Luxor.”

Schools, coptic christian churches, mosques, shops and homes along Sphinx Avenue will all be dismantled as part of a re-envisioning of Luxor as an open air museum. Tour guides and government authorities alike were buzzing over the concept, which aims to make the city more accessible to tourists, while, residents claim, hiding as much of the local infrastructure as possible.  

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From ancient houses of worship to Saladin’s shrine, three labyrinthine khans, and a 13th century library, Damascus suffers no shortage of authentic attractions. But you’ll see nothing more frequently than a panoptic trilogy of faces: President Bashar al-Assad, his late brother Basil al-Assad, and his late father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for 30 years.

Photographs of the family – particularly the president – grace shop windows, countless billboards, decals on passing cars, watch faces and the walls of university libraries.

Across the Arab world, Muslim and secular leaders use the image of the great leader as a way to encourage loyalty. But it’s also a way to remind citizens that they’re under watch. It’s a practice popular since the 1950s, when former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser pioneered an anti-colonialist, pan-Arab movement that won him unconditional favor across the region. His face loomed in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq.

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In the summer of '95 my parents and I went on vacation to San Diego, California. At just seven years old this would be my first time in California, my first excursion to the west coast and my first whiff of pacific air.

I remember we stayed in this old bed and breakfast that looked like Danny Tanner's digs in Full House, only painted hot red. We went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park where I learned that unicorns were invented by an old conquistador's lack of depth perception and to the San Diego Zoo where we searched for our car keys for seven hours. On the hottest day of the trip, we met with my mom's twin sister (my aunt Nancy) and her husband Ned, who lived in upstate New York but happened to be staying in San Diego for a couple of the days we were. We marked the occasion with a trip to Sea World.

We saw Shamu the whale, or whichever whale-farm clone thereof this killer-orca was, walked by seal tanks and watched a pod of bottle-nose dolphins leap headlong through rings of fire.

The hilariously ironic thing whenever I visit an aquarium, water park or neighbor's above ground pool, however, is that I can't swim and I'm admittedly a bit aquaphobic. In my head I liken it to Jim Carrey's character in "The Truman Show" although I can't claim recollection of any reality-altering, aquatic trauma from my childhood that will haunt me until I overcome these demons to escape the reality TV show being made out of my life 24-hours-a-day or, roughly, Survivor but running backwards.

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As fascinating as every inch of Syria was, it left me emotionally repressed and rather homesick. I understand completely why Syrians don't like to speak publicly about politics, not fearing the chopping block but because it's utterly exhausting in a country so mindful of conflict to have your guttural yelps filtered and sedated. While Cairo charmed me, pulling at my heartstrings to evoke seditionous ramblings and ardent affection for every last stray cat, Damascus was a less immersive exercise. Instead, our differences were sugar coated and dressed in peculiar little hats, all tied up with ribbon and spit-shined sequins, and presented on a silver platter next to nationalistic totems reeking of bullshit. How exhausting.

In this mood Jimi Hendrix was an emancipator, injecting a patient appreciation for chaos into my bloodstream as we flew to Doha, a city that industrializes order and uniformity while mutant structures of metal and glass spring up like wildflowers. The grandsons of Indian and Philippine crop farmers dot the otherwise desolate, sidewalk-less, asphalt corridors, delivered each morning by bright yellow school buses and crowded vans to set in steel Doha's aspirations as the financial capital of the gulf.

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The primary, and perhaps most exciting, reason for our trip to Doha was to tour Al Jazeera headquarters. Al Jazeera is media phenomenon in the region and has been widely lauded as a force for democratization and political awareness. Among American audiences however, it's mostly recognized as the cable news network that televises Bin Laden tapes (which in itself is not wholy accurate).

Having watched Al Jazeera English exclusively while here in Qatar, I've been astounded by the professionalism in their reporting. The networks builds on the objective, multi-perspective angle of BBC World News yet covers the headlines with much more depth and insight.

One story about disaster preparedness drills in Israel for instance, utilized interviews with Israeli military commanders, Palestinian civilians, a Georgetown University expert and official spokesmen from both Hamas and the Israeli government.

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Ruins of an old Crusader castle. Oh how far we've come...Well hello there, I haven’t seen you in awhile. I’m Nick Mendez, and while I’m not pillaging the Syrian countryside searching for a faster trading route to mainland China, I can be seen on programs such as “Name That Goat,” “Mosque Matters” and “Little Krak on the Prairie.”

I can speak with a measured amount of levity because we’ve arrived in Doha, Qatar and escaped the watchful eye of our Syrian handlers. The endless rain of propagandist half-truths and dodged questions is over, missed for its journalistic challenge yet now blissfully out of our purview.

Far removed from the bustle of modern Cairo, Damascus was serenely peaceful, even as we were constantly reminded of Israel’s atrocities and our as oft-accused “arian complacency.” Syrians consider the Israeli occupation the mother of all problems. Remarkably however, a society so tormented by an ethnic conflict has congregated in a city devoid of it. As much as our guide might credit this harmony to the Syrian generosity of spirit, I’d speculate it has much more to do with the secret police, their heavily-armed street presence and the pious glorification of President Bashar al-Assad.

Even in passing, everything I’ve experienced in this region, the good or the bad, has roots in religious reverence. They say to understand the middle east you have to understand Islam, but the veins of Islamic influence run far past politics and indeed fuel economic and social policy as well.

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