Travels in the Riel World

The three major monotheistic religions that sprang from the Middle East - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - have been at the source of much division and conflict in the world.  What is sometimes forgotten, unfortunately, are the common roots of these three religions, such as their shared ancestry dating back to Abraham.

The author Bruce Feiler wrote about this topic recently in his book, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.  But now an organization called the Abraham Path Initiative is going further by developing a pilgrimage route that will trace the path of Abraham’s travels through the Middle East.  The project is discussed in this article.

Heeding God’s call, Abraham embarked on a journey to a new land, where a covenant with God, believers say, made him the patriarch of Jews, Muslims and Christians, celebrated for his faithfulness today by nearly half the world.  That same path through the Middle East is drawing new attention as a way to ultimately inspire and promote reconciliation for his children.

The Abraham Path Initiative calls for a renewed focus on the journey itself as a way to emphasize the shared ancestry of three often divided faiths. The group hopes to draw people to the region to retrace Abraham’s footsteps…

The Abraham Path project started … with a plan to chart Abraham’s path as closely as possible, from where he heard God’s call to his burial site. The route starts at the ruins of Harran in what is now southeastern Turkey and proceeds through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. It ends in Jerusalem at the tomb of Abraham in Hebron.

For additional information, you can visit the website of the Abraham Path Initiative.

Most people know Paris as the City of Light.  Most people don’t know, however, that the city government actually employs people who are solely responsible for designing and lighting Paris’ monuments, bridges and public buildings.

The NY Times recently ran a rather interesting profile of Francois Jousse, who is the “chief engineer for doctrine, expertise and technical control” for the City of Light.

Working with a staff of 30 decorative lighting specialists at a City Hall annex, Mr. Jousse helps create new lighting projects, lectures experts, negotiates with powerful players like the Roman Catholic Church and resolves technical problems at sites throughout the city. …

Mr. Jousse became one of the world’s foremost urban lighting experts by accident. A native of Paris, he landed a job in 1963 with the city’s engineering division after graduating from college, helping widen and deepen the city’s canals. … In 1981, a supervisor asked him to change course once again. “He wanted someone who would not be caught up in daily work and could think about light,” Mr. Jousse said. …

At the time, most of the Paris monuments were either unlighted or only crudely illuminated with big spotlights that shone directly onto the facades. Mr. Jousse sought out urban architects and theatrical lighting experts for ideas and technical training. He eventually created a research laboratory for the city of Paris, where he and a team began to create fixtures and to experiment with the color and intensity of light. The city now spends about $260,000 a day on its lighting.

There is something uniquely French about caring so much for one’s cultural heritage that a city would devote these resources to ensure the proper lighting of buildings and monuments.  How many cities hire someone to “think about light?”  If he had his way, though, Mr. Jousse would even go a bit further.

“If City Hall gave me money to do whatever I want, I’d teach people about the beauty of light. I’d make Parisians the owners of their light.”

Business Week recently published an interesting column by Nandani Lynton in which she discussed some of the cultural challenges that face China in its efforts to build a more innovative economy.

Innovation is the buzzword in China these days. The mainland overtook Japan this year to become the world’s No. 2 investor in R&D after the U.S. The government has declared that by 2010, China will be an innovative society.

Despite these national goals, however, she describes some of the “barriers to innovation” in Chinese society.

The very structure of Chinese society has inherent barriers to innovation. The country’s monolithic culture, growing from a predominantly Han-Chinese tradition, and a deep tendency toward strong hierarchies, does not encourage thinking in new ways or including outsiders. This makes it difficult to understand new markets, to think creatively, or to accept eccentrics.

Chinese have a strong group focus, and prefer to work, communicate, and share information with people they know and trust. They often exclude anyone from another department or division even within the same company or university, much less from outside the organization.

All these habits discourage appreciation of different types of thought, behavior, or people. That stifles the kind of cross-fertilization and cooperation that multinationals tap to boost innovation.

Interestingly, though, she also sees a culture that is changing in a way that may make it more open to innovation in the future.

…professors point out that students no longer respect authority or do what they are told. This may create havoc as this generation enters the workforce, raising new questions about teamwork, for example - but it bodes well for developing wacky people who think in different, innovative ways.

There was a wonderful in-depth interview recently on World Hum with the travel writer Pico Iyer.  He is the author of Video Night in Kathmandu, Falling Off the Map, and a number of other titles.  Some excerts from the interview:

How do you think travel writing has evolved over the past 20 or 30 years?

I think it’s evolved a great deal. Partly because even when I was growing up, travel writing was mostly white, nearly always male, often from England, and about going to Africa and Kenya and surveying the strange customs of the natives. And I think now it is more and more about a half-Thai, half-German girl living in Iowa City, going to an Afghanistan full of German aid workers and Japanese businessmen.

And what used to be a very simple discussion between, in some ways, colonizer and colonized, is now a dialogue between a multi-cultural society and a multi-cultural person. All of which has made the texts much more interesting.

I think travel writing is also having to confront a challenge, which is a good challenge, namely the fact that it is not a remarkable thing now to describe Mongolia or Tibet because anyone can access them on the Internet or their TV screens. And so the person who goes there has to do something more and other than just bringing back the sights and sounds. … the travel writer has to extend the form and refresh it, to write a more inward kind of travel.

You are very adept at noticing trends, global trends, not only in cultures and how they’re exchanged, but also in people, and how they travel. Have you noticed anything in terms of after 9/11 versus pre- 9/11 about how that changed?

In the rest of the world, I don’t see much of a change in perceptions of America except perhaps a hardening of that fundamental disjunction … which is that most parts of the world are quite skeptical or hostile towards the American government, but those same people love American culture and love nearly every American individual they meet.

A few years ago I went around to all the countries then covered by the “Trading With the Enemies Act” - Cuba, China, North Korea, and Vietnam - and I found … those people were more keen to meet Americans than anyone else.  And that’s something … that many people in this country who don’t travel, don’t know.

I suppose the only thing I notice is that the gap between America and the rest of the world does seem to be increasing. … The country that most wants to change the world is also the country that least wants to see or learn about the world.

Monday is Christmas and many people are getting ready to enjoy a long holiday weekend.  So it seems like a good time to take a look at a few of the different Christmas traditions from around the world.  These examples are excerpted from a wikipedia entry:

* Australia and New Zealand - In the Southern Hemisphere, Christmas occurs during the summer. This clashes with the traditional winter iconography, resulting in images such as a fur-coated Santa Claus surfing in for a turkey barbecue on Australia’s Bondi Beach. New Zealanders also commonly celebrate Christmas at the beach, coinciding with the vibrant red flowering of the coastal Pohutukawa or “New Zealand Christmas Tree”.

* Mexico - Mexico’s Christmas traditions are centered on posadas. Over a nine day period, groups of townspeople go from door to door, in a fashion reminiscent of visitors to the baby Jesus, and are periodically called inside homes to participate in the breaking of a gift-filled pinata. … They put shoes under the Christmas tree for the epiphany (three kings). They believe that the Three Kings will bring them a gift like they gave to baby Jesus.

* Germany - Saint Nicholas Day on December 6th resembles the Christmas of the English-speaking world. Sinterklaas, from whom the English and American Santa evolved, brings presents to every child who has been good. He wears a red bishop’s dress with a red mitre, rides a white horse over the rooftops, and is assisted by many mischievous helpers called ‘zwarte Pieten’ (black Peters)…Following Saint Nicholas Day, which is mostly for children, the actual Christmas gift-giving usually takes place on the night of Christmas eve, with gifts put under the Christmas tree after a simple meal.

* Sweden - Christmas celebrations begin with the first of Advent. Saint Lucia Day (locally known as Luciadagen) is the first major Christmas celebration before Christmas itself. As in many other countries in northern Europe, Jultomten (a version of Santa Claus mixed with old folklore) brings the presents on Christmas Eve. Almost all Swedish families celebrate Christmas on December 24 with a smorgasbord of food.

* South Korea - The only East Asian country to recognise Christmas as a public holiday.  As in the West, Christian churches in Korea hold Christmas pageants and conduct special services.  Non-Christian Koreans otherwise go about their daily routine on December 25 but may engage in some holiday customs such as gift-giving, sending Christmas cards, and setting up decorated trees in their homes; children, especially, appear to have embraced Santa Claus, whom they call Santa Haraboji (Grandfather Santa).

That’s a small sampling of the many ways in which people celebrate Christmas around the world.  Enjoy the holiday!

During the summer, I had a post about the differences between Sunnis and Shiites within Islam.  Unfortunately, it seems that at least some members of Congress aren’t as curious about the world as are readers of this blog.

The incoming chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, was recently unable to tell a reporter whether Al Qaeda was a Sunni or Shiite organization (it’s Sunni) and he knew little about Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that just fought a war with Israel and is threatening a takeover of Lebanon’s government. 

Now, for many people that would not be surprising and it would hardly be an indictment of their intelligence.  But this, after all, is someone who is being paid by taxpayers to serve on the Intelligence Committee.  He is responsible for helping to oversee U.S. policies that involve the Middle East - a region that is dominated by differences between Sunnis and Shiites!

Not that he’s alone among his peers in what he doesn’t know.  As USA Today noted:

Reyes, a member of the intelligence panel for almost six years, isn’t the only U.S. official ignorant of the basics. Earlier interviews by the same CQ reporter revealed that the chief of the FBI’s national security branch and two Republicans on the intelligence committee were also confused about the difference between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

There’s a “gotcha” quality to these questions, but this is, after all, basic information … Someone who doesn’t understand those distinctions simply can’t do the job well.

And the Sacramento Bee had this to say:

… Reyes was incapable of answering basic questions about the major players in the Middle East. In fairness, Stein noted that two key Republicans on the Intelligence Committee, interviewed last summer, knew even less than Reyes. And Trent Lott, R-Miss., in September said of Sunnis and Shiites, “They all look the same to me.” …

It is bad enough that President Bush and top administration officials show little understanding of the Middle East. It is positively depressing that the members of Congress responsible for overseeing our policies are equally, perhaps even more, ignorant.

The NY Times picked up on the issue, as well, and offered a review of the differences between Islam’s two main sects.  For those who are interested, there are also in-depth wikipedia entries on both Sunnis and Shiites.  Perhaps we should send copies to some members of the government.

Mention Nicaragua to most people and the first thoughts that will come to mind are the Sandinistas, a civil war, perhaps the Iran-contra scandal.  But those events now belong to history and Nicaragua is slowly gaining cachet as a tourist destination.  This article even described it as the “Next Costa Rica,” alluding to the popularity of its Central American neighbor.

Here is a description, for example, of the colonial city of Granada:

Everywhere, new cobblestones were going in, and new streetlights. Fresh paint in vivid yellow, pink and blue shone on magnificently restored … 19th-century churches. Visitors — European tour groups, Latin American families, Australian backpackers — wandered about the central part of the town, soaking up the evanescent atmosphere of more than a hundred years of solitude.

Like every city in Nicaragua, Granada is in a spectacular location. A richly forested volcano overlooks the city, which is perched at the edge of Lake Nicaragua.  At the foot of the city, an enchanting archipelago of tiny, close-set islands beckons.

We all know, of course, that people in various cultures can have vastly different ways of communicating.  But different ways of swearing?  Well, as this recent article from the Washington Post points out, when French-speaking Canadians get angry, they tend to spew religious words that could have been taken straight out of Catholic Church service.

“Oh, tabernacle!” The man swore in French as a car splashed through a puddle, sending water onto his pants. He could never be quoted in the papers here. It is too profane.  So are other angry oaths that sound innocuous in English: chalice, host, baptism. In French-speaking Quebec, swearing sounds like an inventory being taken at a church.

English-speaking Canadians use profanities that would be well understood in the United States, many of them scatological or sexual terms. But the Quebecois prefer to turn to religion when they are mad.

This article amused me.  Not just because of the different curses across cultures, but because part of my childhood suddenly came to life.  You see, my late grandparents are from Quebec and my father grew up speaking French at home.  Hence, when I was young, I was led to believe that the French term for tabernacle was a swear word.

In terms of culture, though, the real interesting question here is why different cultures choose these words as curses.

“When you get mad, you look for words that attack what represses you,” said Louise Lamarre, a Montreal cinematographer … ”In America, you are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms.”

And the words that are shocking in English — including the slang for intercourse — are so mild in Quebecois French they appear routinely in the media. But not church terms.

“You swear about things that are taboo,” said André Lapierre, a professor of linguistics at the University of Ottawa. In the United States, “it is not appropriate to talk about sex or scatological subjects, so that is what you use in your curse words. The f-word is a perfect example.  In Canadian French, you have none of the sexual aspects. So what do you replace it with? You replace it with religion.”

So remember, the next time you’re in Quebec, try not to use the t-word.

Thailand has long been acknowledged as the strongest and most advanced economy in Southeast Asia.  But Vietnam is gaining quickly in the eyes of the business world, particularly in light of the new political uncertainty in Thailand.  The Christian Science Monitor recently reported on the economies of Vietnam and Thailand.

Just three years ago, as Bangkok played host to the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, Thailand’s booming economy was the talk of the town. Leader Thaksin Shinawatra rode a wave of popular support as his economic policies reaped growth rates higher than 6 percent, and pundits anointed him the successor to regional leaders like Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew.

Now the military has ousted Thaksin, and the excitement has shifted a few hundred miles east to Hanoi, which hosted the annual APEC summit last month. Vietnam enjoys Asia’s second-fastest growing economy behind China and is finally set to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) after eight years of negotiations.

Vietnam’s success has been so dramatic that it’s even being compared to that rising Asian power to the north…

“Talk to any businessman, and they say Vietnam is the next China,” said a Bangkok-based Western diplomat who monitors economic activities. “Yes, the infrastructure may not be as good as in Thailand, but they have 84 million people, they work like dogs, and they really want the investment.

Well, I wrote about a Japanese topic yesterday, but it’s hard not to post about the surge of interest in Daisuke Matsuzaka.  In case you haven’t heard, this Japanese baseball star agreed to a contract yesterday with the Boston Red Sox and a recent search at Google News turned up nearly 2,000 media articles about the signing.  This isn’t peace in the Middle East, but people are obviously talking.

Most of the articles are about the baseball or the money, of course, but there are also numerous cultural aspects that are being discussed.  Here is a sampling:

Just before the signing was announced, the International Herald Tribune noted that the hardball negotiating tactics being used were not so common in Japan.

… many Japanese are worried that what they perceived as American hardball negotiating tactics, by both the Red Sox and Matsuzaka’s agent, Scott Boras, which are being reported in great detail by Japanese, could result in the pitcher coming back home with a loss of face and a lack of souvenirs.

On Japanese TV, the baseball talks are bigger news than the six-party negotiations with North Korea. Commentators on morning shows normally devoted to corporate scandals analyze the nuance of every non-Japanese move made by Boras or the Red Sox general manager, Theo Epstein, and its president, Larry Lucchino.  This is not how Toyota or Mitsubishi would recruit a potential employee.

Ron Borges of MSNBC also touched on the topics of money and face in Japan.

What Matsuzaka understood was what Boras never could, which was that unbridled greed would not set well in Japanese society. If he returned to Tokyo without having signed with the Sox after asking to be posted, he would not have been well received. Greed may be in in America, but it has its limits in Japanese baseball circles and Matsuzaka hit it at around $9 million a year.

Jackie MacMullan of the Boston Globe, meanwhile, mused about the cultural difficulties Matsuzaka will face in adjusting to the U.S.

He is about to immerse himself in a community that is as foreign to him as the streets of Tokyo would be to us. People born in this country have enough trouble learning the quirky ways of New Englanders. Factor in a language barrier, a cultural divide, and a little matter of having to perform on one of the most discerning — not to mention relentless — stages in baseball, and you hope this young pitcher can keep on smiling. …

“I want to make sure this young man with his extraordinary ability can transfer that ability to this country,” Boras said. “That’s not an easy step.  The most concerning part was, and still is, the often difficult and important transition to a new culture.”

There were a few other interesting takes on the story, as well:

-  The Boston Globe reported that Japanese tourism to Boston is likely to surge as a result of the signing.

-  And a blitz of coverage by the Japanese media is kicking up the already intense coverage of the Red Sox another notch or two.

-  My favorite unusual angle, however, was the story in yesterday’s NY Times that reported how some Japanese baseball fans are convinced that a player’s blood type contributes to his success or failure.  In fact, it is believed that one’s blood type can help predict a person’s character. Matsuzaka’s blood type, by the way, is O, which labels him as a “warrior.”

For many people, there is no more potent symbol of Japanese culture than the kimono.  It has been immortalized in the popular imagination, and in numerous movies and books, such as Memoirs of a Geisha.  However, there is now a story in the Washington Post about the declining importance of the kimono in modern Japanese culture.

Few garments are as tied to a nation as the kimono is to Japan. In a society that values the unspoken, its colors and patterns have for centuries served as an alternative form of speech. … the kimono long remained the vanity garment of choice for major events in Japanese life. But now, the country’s own demographics are working against it.

Fewer Japanese are marrying today than ever, and those who do largely shun traditional white wedding kimonos in favor of Western-style dresses. A declining birthrate, meanwhile, has meant fewer babies, which in turn has meant fewer sales of kimonos for children’s coming-of-age rites. Nationwide, kimono sales have more than halved in the past decade.

The article is an interesting read.  It provides a look into how the Japanese culture is changing, and it also provides a glimpse into the fading art of kimono weaving.

His fingers muscled from almost a century of weaving, Yasujiro Yamaguchi worked the humming loom in his private workshop. Patiently lacing golden threads through a warp of auburn silk, he fashioned a bolt of kimono fabric blooming with an autumn garden in shades of tea green, ginger and plum.

But Yamaguchi, like Japan’s signature kimono, is slipping into winter. At 102, he is among the last master weavers of Nishijin, the country’s most celebrated kimono district, and his pace has slowed. He rubbed the morning chill from his knuckles, fitted his hunched shoulders deeper inside his indigo jacket and resolutely pushed on.

This kimono — for the role of a willowy beauty in a classical Noh play, withering from the loss of her lover — will take him a full year to make.  If Yamaguchi doesn’t finish it, there are few weavers left in Japan skilled enough to take over.

The NY Times recently unveiled a list of 24 travel destinations for 2007.  A few of the more intriguing include:

Albania - “Budget destination of the year” -

Not long ago, to suggest Albania as a destination of any kind, even a frugal one, would have been the height of chutzpah. … In the last several years, however, Albania has made enormous strides in democracy and development — and revealed itself to be not only ripe for tourists, but affordable to boot.

Yemen - “Adventure destination of the year” -

… in contrast to the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, which is mostly hot, dry and barren, Yemen is practically a cool green paradise, with crisp mountain air, enormous acacia trees, pristine coral reefs and verdant fields … In recent years, tour operators have started to capitalize on Yemen’s exotic geography as the new frontier in adventure travel.

Vientiane, Laos - “Treasures without the crowds” -

Feel like taking a few days’ break from the hectic Southeast Asian tourism circuit? Then point yourself toward Vientiane, Laos’s easygoing capital.

Zanzibar - “A crossroads lapped by the Indian Ocean” -

… swoon under the charms of the Edenic beaches, bustling bazaars and beguiling multicultural froth of the so-called Spice Island, now an autonomous territory of Tanzania.

You can read about these and the other 20 destinations at the Times’ travel section.  There is an interactive map to all 24 locations here.

As China’s economy globalizes and its educational system tries to prepare students for a more interconnected world, there is a simultaneous push in Chinese schools to introduce young people to the country’s ancient culture, including the teachings of Confucius.  There is an interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor about these sometimes conflicting goals.

On a recent Friday afternoon in this southern Chinese province, the fourth-graders at Bowen International School were sitting up straight, their arms neatly crossed in front of them, belting out 13th-century Chinese poems on the virtues of being polite, respecting their parents, and working hard in school.  “To behave as a younger brother towards elders, is one of the first things to know,” the children chanted with drill-like intensity. …

But as the government asks schools like Bowen to focus more on classic Chinese literature and art - including the teachings of Confucius, who emphasized traditional values and respect for elders - recent national curriculum reforms also call for more creativity and critical thinking in the classrooms …

So while some lessons transport the children back to ancient China, others aim to prepare the students for a more modern, global future.  … Wang Jiajun, the principal of the Beijing Huijia Private School, says the goal is simple: “We want our students to become world people with Chinese hearts.”

Are you familiar with Lonely Planet’s Bluelists?  According to Lonely Planet, a bluelist is “an evolving selection of classic and current travel experiences and destinations … To Bluelist something is the travel equivalent of ‘you should see my guy, he’s the best’. It’s the act of recommending a travel experience. Any travel experience.”

Lonely Planet has a Bluelist website and now an annual Bluelist book.  One can spend hours wandering through the lists, discovering “6 ways to change your life in South-East Asia,” “Why Fiji is more than just beaches,” or even the “Best Cuban bars in Eastern Europe.”

Of course, some of the lists are more memorable than the others.  One of my favorites is called “World senses - smells” and involves one person’s memories of scents around the world, ranging from the vanilla pods of Madagascar to Italian coffee in Italy to the perfume markets of Oman.

Some of our most intense travel experiences involve our senses, and we all have our own memories of the smells and scents of various countries.  I can vividly recall, for example, the smell of the land in Kenya at dawn, wafting incense in Bali, Asian foods being cooked at hawker centers in Singapore, and the blooming of springtime flowers in Colonia, Uruguay. 

What are some of your own personal memories of the scents of the world?

The movie Borat, about a fictionalized journalist from Kazakhstan on a journey through America, has been the source of much laughter in movie theaters in recent weeks.  That is, when the same movie wasn’t causing horrified jaws to drop.  It has also caused a surge in interest in the actual country of Kazakhstan.

USA Today recently ran a story about the “real Kazakhstan.”

At a national park an hour’s drive from the largest city in the ninth-largest country on earth, men with broad smiles and sharp knives crouch over the steaming entrails of a horse whose meat they’ll be savoring for months.

Back in town at a Wi-Fi-friendly coffeehouse, wafer-thin women clad in Dolce & Gabbana and stiletto boots nibble smoked salmon sandwiches against a backdrop of Toyota Sequoias and Lexus sedans.

And in the chilly parking lot of what’s billed as the world’s highest Olympic skating rink, members of a champagne- and vodka-fueled wedding party — one of 70 or 80 a day on weekends — kick up their heels to a traditional Caucasus folk dance called the lezginka.

Welcome to the glorious, previously obscure nation of Kazakhstan.

The sudden interest in Kazakhstan appears ready to fuel an increase in tourism, according to the NY Post:

Travel agents in the United States and Britain say they have seen a big increase in inquiries about trips to Kazakhstan since the Sacha Baron Cohen flick was released. … And Kazakh Embassy officials in Washington told The Times of London that it has been getting 100 calls per week asking advice for how to visit and what to expect in the country.

Not surprisingly, some ambitious Kazakhs have taken advantage of this wave of publicity:

Sayat Tours, a travel company based in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, is using the slogan, “Take that, Borat,” to market its “Kazakhstan vs. Boratstan Tour” of “the country’s spectacular deserts, soaring mountains and beautiful women.”

In Africa, and throughout the developing world, there is a large informal economy.  Many individuals are essentially self-employed, although not in a formal way and not necessarily by choice.  But in order to survive, countless people take to selling their wares and services on street corners or wherever else they are able to.  Today’s Washington Post has an interesting look at this informal economy as it exists in Kinshasa, Congo.

Waka, 31, (is) a trained mechanic who has tried and failed to find work as a mechanic, as a driver, as a guard, as anything in a city where regular paying jobs are almost nonexistent.  And so for 12 years, he has competed in the daily roulette known as the informal economy, an off-the-books netherworld of scrappy enterprise that somehow keeps this city functioning and which includes the vast majority of its 6 million people. …

Here, scenes of lethargy are rare; instead, there is the alert energy of people whose daily survival depends on creating something out of nothing, from the jobless teacher selling ices on the corner, to so-called passers whom travelers pay to get through the chaotic airport, to a growing number of street hawkers such as Waka who roam the wide boulevards selling bananas, or knockoff Roberto Cavalli fashions imported from China. …

For the vast majority … day-to-day life exists on the margins, without access to credit, without banks, without insurance, beyond any government regulation or benefit, beyond even any physical structure.  In Kinshasa, if you have a chair, some scissors and the sprawl of a mango tree, you have a barbershop. …

“We’re here 365 days a year,” Kasiala said. “If you stay home, you’ll starve.”

NPR runs an occasional series of pieces called Kitchen Window.  Today’s topic is the cuisine of Afghanistan.  The author provides a delectable overview of the country’s culinary influences, as well as recipes for a couple of dishes.

Afghanistan is at the culinary crossroads of many cultures. The cuisine relies on spices such as cumin, sesame, cinnamon and coriander, which are also central to Indian food. Green cardamom flavors Chinese green tea. The country’s many kebabs show kinship with the Middle East, as does the liberal use of yogurt. …

Nuts and dried fruits, too, are an integral part of Afghan cuisine. They are sprinkled generously on rice dishes and ground into rich chutneys. Long-grain rice is made into the various risotto-like pilaos that serve, like the breads, as a staple of the cuisine. …

The slender tapering okra — referred to as “the bride’s fingers” in the local language, Dari — is made into a delicious stew. Plump red pumpkins and squashes called kadhoos are pan-cooked with onions or transformed into halwa, a warm, melt-in-your-mouth dessert with the consistency of fudge. Rose water and saffron are used as flavoring in desserts. Bazaars are abundant with grapes, melons, pears and apricots in season.

For more information and recipes, you can check out the cookbook Afghan Cuisine, or this ethnic foods website.

The Asian Games are currently being held in the Muslim nation of Qatar.  By all accounts, the games are a success and the capital city of Doha has spent billions of dollars on facilities and infrastructure upgrades in hopes of attracting future sporting events, perhaps even a Summer Olympics.  But one thing money cannot buy is a change in sporting attire, such as the tiny bikinis worn by female beach volleyball players that are now opening eyes in Qatar.

When Salim Al-Nabit and his friends went to see beach volleyball for the first time, they left their wives home.

Al-Nabit said he would watch the bikini-clad women, but he certainly wouldn’t want his wife to do so. He was there, he added, because it was a matter of national honor.

“We don’t see this a lot in Qatar,” Al-Nabit said. “I think most people think it is outrageous. But we accept it because it is important for our country. We want others to see us as a generous and hospitable people, willing to accept their ways, even if we don’t agree.”

Among the 16 Muslim nations represented at the Asian Games, only one has a team entered in the beach volleyball competition - Iraq, who is represented by two Christian sisters attired in somewhat more conservative shorts and tops.

The Qatari women are sitting out the event, though Qatar has teams for everything from archery to skeet shooting.

“It’s not good,” said Parvana Khoory, who watched from the almost-empty stands around the 1,500-seat center court dressed in black from head to toe. “We want a woman to cover all of her body. I think this discourages Muslim women from playing this sport.”