Kati of Arabia
Some eagle-eyed neighbours (I name no names) may have seen a light shining in my home window in Helsinki this evening. Indeed, Kati of Arabia is no more! I have shed my Beduine robes and my Beduine prospective husbands and the Beduine sun to become, once again, plain old Kati, Queen of Darkness.
Despite an active lifestyle and frugal eating habits (well, outside of Turkey anyway) I have lost no weight. However, according to the airport scales, my backpack has gained 6 kilos!! Quite HOW this is possible, since I seriously haven't bought anything (so a few rocks from Petra may just have slipped into my luggage, but not 6 kilos of them), remains one of the great, unanswered cosmic questions of our times.
What I have got is lots of memories to think about as I gaze out into the darkness and try to get into the Christmas mood. Ferry rides on the Bosphorus, erect stones in Love Valley Cappadocia, Crusader dream castles in Syria, a flamenco-filled Finnish independence day and Al Khawalis eggplant surprise in Damascus, snorkeling among the coral with little brother and several lion fish in Aqaba, and of course, there's always Petra.
Also the kindness of people (Syria as part of G.W.Bush's axis of evil - really, get a life George!), the calls for prayer from the minarets (these calls - nearly songs - are truly beautiful - though not always the first call around 4.30am if you happen to have a room right next to a mosques loud speaker as I all too often did) and all the other street sounds. Why, I could almost become nostalgic next time I hear the Lambada.
And after yet more miles of lugging the damned heavy thing around, the number of pages of James Joyce's Ulysses I read during this trip will be no surprise to anyone. None.
Oh well, maybe next time, eh!
Despite an active lifestyle and frugal eating habits (well, outside of Turkey anyway) I have lost no weight. However, according to the airport scales, my backpack has gained 6 kilos!! Quite HOW this is possible, since I seriously haven't bought anything (so a few rocks from Petra may just have slipped into my luggage, but not 6 kilos of them), remains one of the great, unanswered cosmic questions of our times.
What I have got is lots of memories to think about as I gaze out into the darkness and try to get into the Christmas mood. Ferry rides on the Bosphorus, erect stones in Love Valley Cappadocia, Crusader dream castles in Syria, a flamenco-filled Finnish independence day and Al Khawalis eggplant surprise in Damascus, snorkeling among the coral with little brother and several lion fish in Aqaba, and of course, there's always Petra.
Also the kindness of people (Syria as part of G.W.Bush's axis of evil - really, get a life George!), the calls for prayer from the minarets (these calls - nearly songs - are truly beautiful - though not always the first call around 4.30am if you happen to have a room right next to a mosques loud speaker as I all too often did) and all the other street sounds. Why, I could almost become nostalgic next time I hear the Lambada.
And after yet more miles of lugging the damned heavy thing around, the number of pages of James Joyce's Ulysses I read during this trip will be no surprise to anyone. None.
Oh well, maybe next time, eh!
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