FOCA 2010 MIDDLE EAST TOUR 2010 Amman/Petra – Damascus/Palmyra – Beirut: March 7 - 15 Dubai, Abu Dhabi: March 15 - 19 Doha: March 20 1 INTRODUCTION Beatrix Barker So much has been written about Dubai and the thought of visiting had been considered by our tours team. It acquired momentum when Art Dubai’s VIP manager, Lela Csaky, came to Los Angeles and we enjoyed a delightful exploratory lunch at Homeira Goldstein’s home. Would a year be sufficient to prepare? Would our group be interested? We decided to give it a chance while also including an optional phase in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon at the beginning of the tour and a day in Doha to see the IM Pei designed Museum of Islamic Art as a conclusion. Such a rare opportunity to visit the area and such a wonderful opportunity to gain rare access as a FOCA group to interesting people, institutions, and sites! After several months of research and contact-building, the basic structure of the tour was in place and we were able to test interest. We were happy to find that our art and culture loving, intrepid group was ready and willing to take a chance. We were up and running! Working with Art Dubai’s VIP team and Contemparabia, we spent a full eight months coordinating and setting up the programs and visits, booking transportation and guides, making hotel and restaurant reservations, picking menus, arranging visas, and overseeing all the many details that go into successful FOCA tours. In spite of some slight challenges of dealing with five countries and numerous service providers, we were able to unveil our schedule at a pre-trip get-together on February 13 at the Venice home of Lebanese artist Huguette Caland. How relevant this first contact was! Huguette was born in Beirut, the daughter of Lebanon's first President after it gained independence from France. She knew most of the people we were scheduled to meet in Lebanon, and during our tour we saw her presence at galleries, heard of the key role she played in founding art schools and also in establishing support activities for Palestinian refugees through art. Quite a lady! Joining us for this introductory event were a few artists from the Middle East who live in Los Angeles, as well as the founder of the Levantine Cultural Center, Jordan Elgrably, and Elie Karam, an award-winning playwright, director and actor who did a presentation on the world of expats in LA and a slide show on the Middle East with focus on Beirut. Our generous Board Chair Homeira Goldstein added another dimension to the evening with exotic foods on beautiful antique silver trays, and so we toasted our adventure with great anticipation. 2 MARCH 7, ARRIVALS KEMPINSKI ISHTAR RESORT on the DEAD SEA, JORDAN Beatrix Barker Snow sprinkling in Amman, flash floods in Petra, rain in Damascus: to the very last day the weather reports for the first stage of our Middle East tour were mixed to alarming. No light packing for this trip, but we set off with the hope that our usual Fellows weather luck would kick in – and indeed it did. By the time we arrived at the Kempinski Ishtar resort, the first of the many wonderful hotels on our tour, beautiful sunshine ensured that some of us could test the buoyancy of the Dead Sea, cover ourselves in its healing black mud, or walk around the fragrant gardens dotted with lagoons, waterfalls and pools, enhanced by flowering shrubs, ancient olive trees and bamboo palms, designed in affectionate tribute to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 3 The Assyrian-Babylonian love goddess Ishtar, whose counterparts were Aphrodite and Astarte, inspired the overall theme of the resort, including the eye shape of the central infinity pool. Ishtar Temple ruins, Babylon (Iraq) Kempinski Ishtar Goddess Ishtar The infinity pool The architecture of the main building housing the restaurants, bars and the beautiful Sunset Terrace, was based on the famous Temple of Ishtar in Babylon. (The ruins of the "holy city" of Babylonia (approximately 2300 BC,) a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, are found about 55 miles south of Baghdad between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Iraq. We got pretty close when visiting Palmyra.) An interesting start to our trip with historic references and hedonistic touches! Early arrivals even had the opportunity to test the Anantara Spa (the largest in the Middle East and one of the largest in the world) with over 20 treatment rooms, outdoor therapy lounges, 28 spa suites, hammam pools, outdoor and indoor jacuzzis, watsu pool, rasul chamber, steam room, ayurveda, Asian therapies, local salt and mud treatments, and much, much more. 4 We all appreciated this mini vacation that helped us get rid of jetlag and build up energy for an intense schedule. The Dead Sea and non-FOCA members floating and using the healing mud Our first “official” gathering was on the Sunset Terrace overlooking the infinity pool that dissolved into the hazy mirror surface of the Dead Sea bordered by the rolling hills of Jerusalem, with the lights of Jerusalem and Jericho becoming more prominent as the sun set. After our cocktail party we moved up to the terrace restaurant to enjoy a buffet dinner of many delicious local dishes before retiring to our beautiful waterfront villas for a good night’s rest. 5 MARCH 8, PETRA Beatrix Barker We had an early start for our day excursion to Petra but we were energized by the morning views of our resort and the Mimosas (freshly squeezed orange juice with champagne!) served at breakfast. Once on our comfortable bus, our informed, witty guide Yamaan, who was to stay with us for the duration of our tour in Jordan, seized the opportunity to tell us about himself and then talk about this interesting country. He is an engineer by education but chose to go through the in depth, rigorous training required to be a tour guide because of his love of the outdoors. Tourism is an important industry with key support from the King and the government. The fact that Mrs. Mahal Khatib, the Minister of Tourism was going to host a luncheon for FOCA further supported this, though unfortunately our plans fell through when she had to travel to Austria with the Prime Minister. Tourism can have significant impact on the economic growth that has traditionally been based on agriculture, in spite of the fact that less than 5% of the land is arable. There are phosphate mines in the south of the kingdom, making Jordan the third largest source of this mineral, and it also has one of the largest uranium reserves in the world. However, since tourism has been contributing close to 12 percent to the country's Gross National Product, political jitters and reputation for safety that might affect this sector are taken seriously. Wedged precariously between Israel and the West Bank to the west, Iraq to the northeast, Syria to the north, and Saudi Arabia to the east and south, Jordan is, as Yamaan said, the quiet house in a very noisy neighborhood. 6 Benefiting from its image as an oasis of stability in a deeply troubled region, it has been able to secure a flow of external assistance that has helped maintain domestic political stability. The country has an efficient and well-trained police force. It ranked first in the region (14th in the world) in terms of police services' reliability. It also ranked first in the region (9th in the world) in terms of prevention of organized crime making it one of the safest countries in the world. We felt safe everywhere. The security at and around our hotel was intense and on the roads we saw prominent military and police presence with numerous checkpoints. This was even more pronounced at the entry points to tourist areas making sure no negative events would spoil the reputation of this growing and key industry. Jordan has grown into a modern nation, which has enjoyed a remarkable measure of peace. But the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, the Persian Gulf War, and other conflicts in Southwest Asia have impacted tourism and the economy. An extremely significant cost is that the country is host to millions of refugees who make up 40% of its population. In this country of 6 million inhabitants, there are 2 million Palestinian refugees fully eligible for government services including education and health care. Another impact on the economy resulted from wealthy refugees from Iraq (1 million) who pushed up property prices by about 200% in the past two years. Jordan was ranked as having one of the highest qualities of life in the Arab World with its educated population and access to advanced healthcare services. Close to 90% of Jordanians have health insurance and the government plans that to be at 100% by 2011. It has given great attention to education that receives 20% of total government expenditures. Modern Jordan was founded by King Abdullah I after World War I. It was ruled by his grandson, The Late King Hussein, for 46 years until his death in 1999, when his son King Abdullah II assumed the throne. Under the 1952 constitution, the king is the most powerful figure in the country, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The royal family, the Hashimites, trace their ancestry back to the family of the Prophet Mohammed – from the female line. The inhabitants of Jordan are mostly of Arab descent (over half are of Palestinian descent,) and Arabic is the official language, although we found that English is widely spoken everywhere.