Cats of Cairo

Snoozing in the garden of the National Museum

Anyone who travels in the Muslim world will notice something--there are an awful lot of cats around. There's a big tradition of loving cats in Muslim society, especially Arab society. The Hadith even has a story about how Mohammad was sitting with some of his followers preaching when a cat curled up on the corner of his robe and went to sleep. When Mohammad finished his sermon the cat was still asleep, and rather than disturb it he cut off the corner of his robe.

In my last two writing retreats in Cairo, I met plenty of Egyptian cats. Here are a few.

Begging for food at a restaurant at Saqqara

Admiring the sunset along the Corniche on the banks of the Nile

The disused back staircase in my building has been taken over by cats

Admiring some historic Muslim architecture

Travel Tuesday: Some Tangier Locations From My Novel

"An old man in a brown djellaba hobbled up the hill, his face obscured under the pointed peak of his hood. Tom could tell the man was old only by the way he moved—stiff and slow, yet sure, one foot after another as he ascended the smooth, steep slope of bare stone, rising up over the lip and silhouetted by the water like some pagan sea god. "

When I was writing my novel, The Last Hotel Room, I spent a few months living in Tangier to get the setting and details right. The novel centers around Tom, a broke American who has lost everything and is stuck in Morocco while the last of his money runs out. He's decided to kill himself at that point, but soon finds himself a precarious income helping a crooked cop extort money from tourists. He used much of this money to support Asif, a Syrian refugee boy who's living alone in Tangier.

My publisher, Kindle Press, has put the ebook edition on sale for 99 cents on the Amazon store through April 3. To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to share some of my photos of Tangier along with associate quotes from the text. They're in chronological order. Enjoy!

"On the days he didn’t have tea with Mohammed, he would round the corner to the Petit Socco and sit at one of the cafés, either the Central, with its wicker chairs and awning, or the Tingis, with its little patio on the high end of the Socco, looking down across the plaza’s length."

"The muezzin’s call lilted over the medina, to be picked up by another muezzin in a mosque further away. The alleys echoed and reechoed with their mingled songs as half a dozen mosques near and far sang out the same song a few words apart from one another."

"The tower was square and made of flat bricks faced with a thick coating of plaster, most of which had flaked away. It would take some time to get the details right in his drawing; it was a bit like the tile work on the mosque but with no regular pattern. The general shape looked easy enough: square with saw-toothed battlements on top. The whole thing listed a little over the cliff. Five centuries of Atlantic rain and wind had gnawed away at the cliff until it reached the base of the tower and then taken a big bite out of the tower’s base. As he watched, a couple of teenage boys popped out of its open front (the wall having tumbled down the precipice long ago), edged around the top of the cliff, and sauntered past him."

"Straight ahead the slope plunged steeply down, allowing them an open, sweeping view of the Strait of Gibraltar glittering in the sunset. Asif stepped out to the edge of the slope, looked over his shoulder at Tom with a smile, and then stared out over the water. Tom stepped up beside him and stared too, resting a hand on his shoulder."

“That is the boat from Tarifa, in Spain,” Asif said quietly, pointing at the catamaran. “So easy for them.”

“Spain looks close,” Tom said.

“Fourteen kilometers. Can you get me on the ferry, Tom?”

“You don’t have a visa. They’d never let you on board and they won’t listen to me. There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

Asif looked disappointed but not surprised.

“I afraid to go the other way,” he whispered, then turned and headed back through the gate. Tom followed, feeling helpless.

I'm on Instagram!

I just started an Instagram account. Yeah, I know I'm way behind the curve on this. I only have a few photos up so far but plenty more will go up in the coming days and weeks. Right now it will mostly be Morocco pics, like this feline cigarette seller from Tangier. I'll also be posting from Cairo once I get there. Later in the year you'll see travel photos from Spain and England and who-knows-where. Feel free to follow me!

Travel Tuesday: Little Details from Famous Sites

When I'm traveling, I like to get shots of the little details. Of course I get the big scenes too, but those little details are often just as interesting. Last week on the Black Gate blog I wrote about Lalibela, an amazing UNESCO World Heritage Site in Ethiopia. Back in the 12th century, the Ethiopians constructed eleven magnificent churches by cutting them out of the bedrock. That's right, they didn't build up, they dug down!

Lalibela is an impressive site, and in the post I linked to above I published some views of the exterior and interior of the churches. I also got some more intimate shots. The above photo shows the lock and bolt on one of the church doors. I like how the indirect sunlight brings out the texture of the wood. Below is a shot of some Ethiopian crosses for sale in a nearby shop. Lalibela is a major pilgrimage site for Ethiopian Christians and the distinct Ethiopian crosses are popular mementos for Ethiopians and foreigners alike. I like how the red background really brings out the brass of the crosses.

So the next time you're at the Eiffel Tower of the Pyramids, don't miss the little details!

Military History Photo Friday: Colonial Forts in Morocco

This shot shows the Casbah de la Cigogne, a 17th century Spanish fort protecting the harbor of Larache in Morocco. The coastline of Africa is studded with old colonial forts, many of which are falling into decay. This one is now a hangout for the local drug addicts. You can read more about the fort and the city it protected in a post about Larache I did for the Black Gate blog.

A view of the Casbah de la Cigogne from the seaside. Photo courtesy user Dans via Wikimedia Commons. When we were there the sun was right behind the fort so all I got was a silhouette. Timing is everything in photography!

Below is part of the 15th century Portuguese fortifications in Asilah, a notorious pirate haven on the Atlantic coast. For more on this cool spot, check out my Black Gate post on Asilah. I blog every Wednesday on Black Gate, usually on travel mixed in with the occasional book review or con report.

For more on colonial forts in Morocco and elsewhere, check out the excellent website Colonial Voyage. They have a good article on Portuguese forts in Morocco.

Travel Tuesday: A Rare Sunny Autumn Day in Oxford

Last week my wife and I were up in Oxford. She had to give a colloquium at the university and I did some research at the Bodleian Library. It being November, of course it was cloudy and rainy almost every day. For the first few hours of our first day, however, the sun shone and the city was beautiful. We took the opportunity to walk through Christchurch Meadows, a stretch of land owned by one of the historic colleges on the river. Along this part of the river the various colleges keep their boat houses and rowing teams practice in the water. The photos are all hers. Enjoy!

Photos copyright Almudena Alonso-Herrero.

Military History Photo Friday: WWI Indian troops cooking on the Western Front

 

This is an interesting image of World War One you don't generally see--some Indian cavalry troopers cooking a meal. It was taken in Estrée Blanche, France, on 25 July 1915 and is part of a massive collection of images the British Library has uploaded onto flickr. The collection, numbering more than a million public domain images that are totally free to reuse, spans every subject imaginable from old maps to children's books. It's an amazing resource for researchers, indie authors, and pretty much everyone else.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about Indian troops in World War One, the British colony contributed some 1.5 million men to the war effort. One wonders if the guys in this shot brought along some curry powder from home or if they were stuck eating the bland fare everyone else had to deal with!

You can get a large-format copy of this image here.

Travel Tuesday: Winter in Tallinn, Estonia

Summer is heating up here in Madrid. It's already broken 40 degrees Centigrade on a few days. Everything is in bloom and the dominant colors are a bright blue sky, green trees, and harsh yellow sunlight.

So let's switch over to the whites and grays of winter. Winter in the capital of Estonia, to be precise. Tallinn is an artsy city, and what can be more artsy than two snow-covered lovers? It's also a historic city, so here's a shot of a medieval tower and Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. I like how the snow keeps the pattern of the roof tiles on the cathedral.

People generally don't go to Estonia or any of the other Baltic states in winter, which is a shame because the mantle of snow beautifies the city and countryside and there are no crowds to contend with. So if you want a different sort of winter vacation, consider heading north!

All photos copyright Sean McLachlan

Travel Tuesday: Old-time tourist trap in Apache Junction, Arizona, 1940

This group of figures made of papier mache stood outside a roadside zoo to attract passing tourists at Apache Junction, Arizona, in 1940. They represented the three stages in the development of the state--"the prehistoric man, the Indian, and the prospector." These figures have long since disappeared. That's not a bad thing.

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Travel Tuesday: Street Food in Iraq

Mazgouf, a fish native to the Tigris River, being cooked by an open fire at Abu Nuwas Park, Baghdad. This is a local specialty. The fish is cut in half and cooked. The remaining skin acts as a bowl as you scoop out the gooey innards.

There's been a lot of grim news coming out of Iraq for a long time now. Usually when we see Iraq on TV we see some psycho fundamentalist or something that's just blown up. So it's important to remember that real people still live there and are trying to make the most out of a bad situation.

Back in 2012 I traveled to Iraq and wrote a series about it for the now moribund travel blog Gadling. It was one of the best and most intense trips of my life. Click the link to read the series. Sadly, the photo galleries have been taken offline, but you can still read the articles.

So here, for your culinary enjoyment, are some photos of the food, mostly street food, I ate while I was there. There are more after the jump. Bon appetit!

Mazgouf ready to be eaten.

Military History Photo Friday: Hitler Youth Prisoners of War

Near the end of the Second World War, seventy years ago, the Third Reich had a serious manpower shortage. Most of the men of fighting age had been killed, wounded, or captured. Older men were conscripted to fill the ranks, and the boys of the Hitler Youth were also called to fight the Allies.

Some of these kids weren't even in their teens. Allied soldiers felt terrible shooting at them, but also had to admit that the young troops often fought very well, having been brainwashed by their upbringing and being too young to fear death. The Allies tried to capture these kids when they could, and there are numerous photographs showing just how young some of them were.

One of the worst things the Third Reich did was to corrupt children with the Nazi ideology. For the Black Gate blog, I recently reviewed a German film from the era titled Hitlerjunge Quex, about a famous member of the Hitler Youth. Originally intended as fascist propaganda, it has strangely morphed in its meaning for modern viewers to have an anti-fascist message.

Civil War Photo Friday: Confederate Prisoners Waiting To Go Home

As I'm sure you've heard, April 9 was the sesquicentennial of the surrender of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House. In the following weeks, more Confederate armies would surrender and tens of thousands of men would soon be heading home. This photo shows Confederate prisoners in Belle Plain, Virginia. While it's undated, scenes like this were common in April 1865. Large masses of men, no longer carrying guns, waited transport back to their home state.

Since the above photo is a bit small, I've zoomed in on part of the crowd. I like the ghostly figures of the ones who moved, and the guy in front looking at the camera. I wonder what happened to all of them after the war?

Photo courtesy National Archives.

Travel Tuesday: Ruined Old Farm in Backwoods Missouri

When I still lived in the U.S., I loved taking road trips on little county roads to find tiny towns and old, abandoned buildings. Missouri was especially good for that. Many farms got abandoned in bad years, and the forest and prairie are slowly reclaiming the land. These shots are from a trip I took while writing my Jesse James book. This barn is from after Jesse's time, though.

Travel Tuesday: The Port at Kirkwall, Orkney Islands

I spotted this rusty old tub in the port of Kirkwall, on a rare sunny day a couple of summers ago. Kirkwall is the main city of the Orkney Islands, which are just off the north coast of Scotland. They are most famous for their Neolithic monuments such as the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness. The landscape is alluring too, with windswept coastline and impressive cliffs where puffins and other sea birds nest. Jump the cut for some more photos.

Military History Photo Friday: WWI Grenade Catapult

World War one was a strange combination of modern and medieval. While it saw the development of aircraft, tanks, and poison gas, it also saw men wearing armor, wielding clubs, and even launching grenades with catapults.

This image dates from 1915 and shows French troops improving their throwing arm by using a catapult to chuck grenades at the German trenches. All sides used these, although they were never terribly widespread. Their accuracy was not the best and better armaments such as the trench mortar soon became available.

I might have to put one of these babies in an upcoming Trench Raiders novel!

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Wild West Photo Friday: J.W. Swart's Saloon in Charleston, Arizona in 1885

Working on my next Osprey book about the Apache Wars has got me reading a lot about Arizona. I've touched on Arizona history before with a different Osprey publication on Wyatt Earp's Vendetta Ride.

In relation to that already published book, here's an image of J.W. Swart's Saloon in Charleston, Arizona. They look like a friendly group, don't they? Charleston was a rough town situated nine miles southwest of Tombstone. It was right across the San Pedro river from Millville, so named because it milled the silver ore mined from Tombstone. The milling process required more water than was available in Tombstone, so the ore had to be shipped down to Millville.

Charleston was where the men who worked in the milling plant lived. It was a rough town and a meeting place for the infamous band of rustlers called the Cowboys, who would have a date with the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday at the OK Corral. The Clanton family, who were prominent among the Cowboys, had a ranch not far from Charleston. One wonders how many outlaws are in this picture.

Charleston has all but disappeared. The collapse of Tombstone's mining industry in 1886, and an earthquake in 1887, pretty much erased Charleston from the map. All that's left of this wild west town today are a few foundations in a lonely stretch of desert.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

More Images from Armenia

As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife recently went to an astronomy conference in Armenia. A big part of any trip is trying new food. She liked these decorated breads. Some of them were baked with nuts in them.

 

Jump the cut for more Armenian tastiness!

Wild West Photo Friday: Apache Scouts

The Apache gave the U.S. government no end of headaches with their raids and defiance of American expansion. Some Apache, however, joined forces with the government to fight against their own and other tribes.

The Apache scouts were some of the most valuable Native American scouts in the U.S. Army. The first all-Apache units were formed in 1871 by Lt-Col George Crook. He mostly recruited Apache who had peacefully settled on the reservation, but would also accept captured "renegades". As he put it, "the wilder the Apache was, the more he was likely to know the wiles and stratagems of those still out in the mountains."

The scouts soon proved their mettle, and in his annual report for 1876, Crook's successor, Col Augustus Kautz wrote,

"These scouts, supported by a small force of cavalry, are exceedingly efficient, and have succeeded, with one or two exceptions, in finding every party of Indians they have gone in pursuit of. They are a great terror to the runaways from the Reservations, and for such work are much more efficient than double the number of soldiers."

Jump the cut to see a closeup of these guys.

Images of Armenia

Soviet-style observatory. It looks like a science fiction cover from the 1970s!

Last month my better half presented a paper at an astronomy conference in Armenia. I was super jealous because it's a a country I've always wanted to visit. Located on the Silk Route, it was a powerful kingdom in various eras, punctuated by periods of foreign rule. Most recently it was a Soviet republic, and now is independent once again.

She was pretty busy being an astronomer so she didn't take as many photographs as she'd have liked to, but here are some of them. More to come!

The observatory with the sunset and moon in the background.

Military History Photo Friday: Crystal Radio in the Trenches

I'm hard at work on my National Novel Writing Project--Radio Hope, a post-apocalyptic tale. I'm proud to say that I've passed the 20,000 word mark in just a week. December will be National Typo Correcting Month!

My story revolves around the residents of New City, the only large settlement in a toxic wasteland filled with bandits, scavengers, insane chemical sniffers, and bloodthirsty cultists. One of the few sources of information is Radio Hope, a mysterious station broadcasting programs about medicine, agriculture, food gathering, and other survival tips.

No one knows where this station transmits from or who's behind it. Since you need electricity to operate a radio, only a lucky few can receive its transmissions, until a mysterious trader emerges from the wildlands with a supply of crystal radios.

Crystal radios were the first popular radios. They rely on a crystal detector to pick up radio signals. The crystal uses the energy from the radio waves themselves to power the radio, so no electricity supply is necessary. In the 1920s store-bought radios were expensive and many rural homes still lacked electricity. It was cheap and simple to build a crystal set, though, and soon most homes had one, leading to the boom in radio.

In this image you can see a French soldier in the trenches during World War One listening to a handmade set. I wonder what he was listening to? An opera from back in Paris?

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.