The Media is the Message at the Palestinian Parliament

Ever since Hamas kicked the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in June, Fatah -- with American encouragement -- has been hitting the airways with tales of Hamas ruthlessness, extremism and totalitarianism in the Strip. So Hamas hit back with a field trip for the foreign press designed to show the world what life in Gaza under Hamas is really like. And if yesterday's events were any guide, lemme tell ya, it's a lark!

First off, we went straight to the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. In contrast to Fatah leaders and their gangsta-fabulous lifestyles, Hanniya and his family still actually live in the 'hood -- in this case Beach Camp, a poor district in Gaza City for refugees from the '48 war. Still, it all got a little thick when Haniyeh himself appeared on the terrace above the journalist throng. I half-expected him to throw roses or start singing: "Don't cry for me Argentina! The truth is I never left you."

The House that Haniyeh Built

Next stop, we looked at some of the houses and buildings belonging to the Palestinian Authority and to Fatah leaders, which were supposedly looted by Hamas, according to Fatah. I personally can attest that the bathrooms in the official Palestinian guesthouse were in perfect working condition. Noticeably absent on this Gaza version of MTV Cribs was a tour of Fatah security chief Mohammed Dahlan's lair. In the days just after the Gazan civil war, angry locals visited the homes of those Fatah heavies accused of murder and torture, and apparently the mobs weren't as nice about using the proper facilities as I was.

I've seen some tough things in the Middle East, but nothing has quite burned my retina like the sight of a hundred journalists bum-rushing the jail cells at Gaza City security headquarters to ask killers, thieves and child molesters what it's like to be in a Hamas-run prison. Talk about Felliniesque. Anyway, I'm just as bad as my colleagues -- I went one floor up and talked to a man convicted of killing a money changer who said the difference between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas was like night and day. Now they've got better food, family visits, and an end to verbal abuse. "Hamas people know God, and they respect our humanity," he said.

What, you don't trust a convicted murderer? Well how about a a Catholic priest. There are about 4,000 Christians in Gaza (of whom about 200 are Catholic) and according to Father Manuel Musallam of the Holy Family Church, they have little to fear from Hamas. "As Palestinians, we Christians live with Muslims, and we suffer with Muslims," he said. "We did not suffer from them. Hamas defends Christians as well as Muslims. We are not talking about a fanatical institution."

Anyway, you get the point. But as heavy-handed as the Hamas PR was, it pretty much checks out. I've been in Gaza since Thursday reporting on my own without Hamas. For the first time in years, civil society is returning to Gaza thanks to the security provided by the 5,000 members of the Hamas Executive Force, a paramilitary unit that has taken over the policing the 1.4 million people of Gaza. Less than two months ago, Gaza was one of the most dangerous places in the world. But within a week after the Hamas takeover, the crime, the violence, the tribal clashes, the kidnappings and murders by in large ended. This is surely one of the world's most impressive law enforcement achievements, and the fact that it was done so quickly with so few people is a testament to the corruption and collusion that was endemic among the 70,000 or so members of the Palestinian security forces in Gaza who were financed by America and mostly loyal to Fatah.

The new security in Gaza partly explains why there were so many journalists on this tour. After the kidnapping of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, Gaza was a no-go area for us. Now Alan is free and a banner hangs in front of the main press building in Gaza city: "No more threat to our foreign visitors and guests -- Hamas." There is a new sheriff in Gaza.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Gaza City

The Israeli-controlled Erez crossing point into the Gaza Strip looks is like an airport terminal to nowhere. After showing my passport and press pass, I enter the glass, air-conditioned and almost completely empty building and walk down a long corridor at the end of which, instead of a waiting airplane, there's a room with seemingly no exit. Then a metal door mysteriously opens, and I leave Israel. Outside there are no customers officers, no passport control, no port authority, just long caged passageways and a huge empty lot with a couple of taxis baking in the summer sun. This is the quietest border crossing in the Middle East.

The Gaza Strip, which is home to about 1.4 million people, is almost fifty day into an Israeli siege. Almost all shipments except for basic humanitarian supplies are barred from entering, and almost nothing comes out. And no one but journalists, members of international organizations like the United Nations, and a tiny number of Palestinians from special professions are allowed to come or go.

The Israelis have sealed the crossing in part as a response to the rockets that are regularly launched from Gaza into Israeli towns in the Negev, occasionally killing civilians, and often damaging homes. But the siege is also the key element of an Israeli and American strategy to isolate Hamas, the Palestinian militant group and political party which after a few short days of internecine Palestinian warfare in June, took control of Gaza from its political rival, Fatah. The hope is that by letting Gaza simmer in its own juices, average Palestinians will turn away from Hamas, which has never recognized Israel, and towards Fatah, which is willing to restart the peace process. Unfortunately, the siege of Gaza appears to be having the opposite effect.

The damage done to the Gazan economy has in fact been catastrophic. Unemployment is up to about 87 percent . About 79 percent of the population is receiving food from the United Nations. Nasser El Helou, a spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce and a hotel owner, estimated that the Gazan economy -- which is based on light manufacturing, agricultural exports, and the wages brought home by day laborers in Israel -- would collapse within two weeks if the siege continues. But he was also clear about whom he blamed for the situation. "If we are free we should control our own borders," he said. "But we do not control our borders, so the full responsibility is on the Israeli side. "

I spent Thursday talking to other business owners -- pragmatic, apolitical people -- who uniformly blamed Israel, the United States and Fatah for the destruction of the Gazan economy. In fact, after years of living with the gangsterism and warlordism that plagued Gaza while it was run by Fatah officials, most are happy with the Hamas takeover. "I blame Fatah and Abu Mazen because they made us live in garbage," said the owner of the largest factory in Gaza, which makes cookies and ice cream, but which is now almost totally shut. "They never wanted to see anyone else prosper. They just wanted to live on top, through corruption."

The business owners pointed out that not only joblessness and poverty pushing average people towards extremism, but they also said that the Israeli embargo was destroying the only class of Palestinians who still looked favorably towards Israel: them. Most of them speak Hebrew, have -- or used to have -- Israeli clients, partners, and friends, and most had once looked forward to the day when there would be no trade barriers at all for an independent Palestine at peace with Israel. "The majority of Gazans do not like Israel'" said Amassi Ghazi, the chairman of a company that imports building materials. "Until now only the private sector had good relations with Israel. So please open the border before you loose the last sector, and all Gaza will be enemies of Israel."

Amassi Ghazi, the owner of a failing export business, with some of the checks from customers that have bounced.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Gaza City

For more on the Saudi religious police, check out my dispatch from Riyadh in this week's magazine. I spent an evening with Mohammed al-Huraisi, the father of a man who is alleged to have been beaten to death at a local HQ of the mutaween two months ago.

As the result of that case and others, there is a growing public backlash against the religious police. One of the interesting and important things about it is that the backlash is not coming just from the minority of liberal, Westernized Saudis but from the majority of ordinary, conservative, religious, middle-class folks. To some Saudis, a woman called Umm Faisal has become something of a folk heroine for standing up to the mutaween. An administrative body fined a religious policeman for mistreating her in an incident four years ago. But rather than let it go, she is suing the religious police for compensation as a means of recovering her honor. She is so conservative, she won't meet with journalists or even her own lawyer. But the lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, one of the Kingdom's brave human righst activists, told me when I met him in Riyadh: "She is stubborn. The public was in desperate need for a lady like Umm Faisal to stand tall and say: 'This is not right. '"

Mohammed al-Huraisi, holding a photo of his deceased son, Salman

The problem many Saudi critics have is not with Islam or even with the religious police per se, but with the license that the mutaween have been given to interfere in the smallest details of everyday life and to effectively act as though they are above the law. It is insignificant, obviously, compared to the more serious allegation of deaths in custody, but the furor over Valentine's Day in Saudi Arabia illustrates the excesses. The Kingdom's religious sheikhs have outlawed Valentine's Day as a pagan celebration, as is their right. But to have the religious police going around the country accosting sellers and buyers of red roses on Feb. 14 is an unjustifiable intrusion into personal privacy. Even in neighboring Kuwait Valentine's Day is widely observed, so surely on that occasion Saudis should be able to buy a flower and do whatever they want with it. As the Saudi novelist Rajaa Alsanea put it to me in my recent interview with her, it's as if love is considered a sin in Saudi Arabia. What people have in their hearts should be their business, no matter what faith they belong to.

Many Saudis are deeply disappointed that after all his nods toward reform, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud has done next to nothing about curbing the religious police. They are aghast at how one of his brothers, Prince Naif, the powerful minister of Interior, can make the statement that I cited in my story this week, that critics of the religious police were "fishing for any mistakes ... and trying to magnify them." If Saudi Arabia is to have any future, they say, the Saudi royal family has to show some better leadership where the rights of its people are concerned. Abdullah has warned Saudis against excusing or appeasing terrorists; many Saudis say that he needs to warn those in authority against abusing the rights of Saudis. The royal family and the Saudi religious establishment should show more confidence in the Saudi people and their religion; the desire to send a Cupid's Arrow doesn't mean that Saudis are tempted to abandon Islam for Christianity.

By the way, Human Rights Watch issued a statement earlier this week on the deaths of al-Huraisi and another Saudi from Tabuk.

--By Scott MacLeod

Rajaa Alsanea created a sensation in Saudi Arabia in 2005 when as a 23-year-old first-time novelist she published Girls of Riyadh. It was a book that broke taboos by revealing the inner lives of young Saudis and especially the Kingdom's sheltered women. Girls of Riyadh is an important book for non-Saudis as well, for it obliterates many misunderstandings about Islam and emphasizes the overwhelming role of culture in the way Saudis live their lives. Girls of Riyadh was just coming out in English translation in the U.S. and Britain when I arrived in Saudi Arabia last week. But I had to call Rajaa in Chicago, where she is attending dental school, to see how she was doing. Read the book to see for yourself, but you'll get some of the idea from my conversation with Rajaa, in which she spoke English throughout.

What inspired you to write Girls of Riyadh?

I wanted to become a writer when I grew up. When I was 18, I felt that I was ready to write something and felt I had this power to write about something that was never written before, and that's the life of girls in Saudi Arabia, and their struggle within the restrictions of traditions and families, and their rights, and the way they try to do everything they can within what's allowed and what's not allowed sometimes.

Rajaa Alsanea/Photo courtesy Penguin Press

Was it purely an act of writing?

Because I started writing the book when I was 18, my mind was changing. I started to have that criticism inside me toward Saudi society. Before, it was something like, “This is my life and I have to live it the way it is, and I don't have to question anything around me.” Growing up I thought, “No, there are things that can be questioned. Anything that is not written by God can be questioned.” I did not question Islamic rules. Seeing how me and my friends and girls in Saudi Arabia are being treated, I felt that this has to change, and that I have to contribute to that change. I've heard people tell me when I used to talk about it, “You'll never change the world.” Maybe that triggered me to actually try to change the world.

How accurate is your portrayal of Saudi Arabia and the lives of women, or at least those in what you call the “velvet society”?

Those stories of those four girls are fictional, but the things they have been through are very realistic. It is not exaggerated. What they have been through happens every day in Saudi Arabia. The way that they struggle and the way that love is considered a sin in Saudi. That's very true. The way girls do not get the respect they need to get, like men do, is very true. The way they try to do things that are not officially allowed for them is true.

All Saudis are Muslims and all Saudis are traditional in one way or another. But some don't really accept what is offered to them. They want more. And they want to question everything. Like me, I don't allow anybody to tell me what do to. And I don't want anybody to tell me how to live my life. I feel that there are things I can ask for, for instance, my right to drive, or to vote. Some girls and some families in Saudi Arabia are afraid of asking for their rights, because that's how everybody is living their lives, and they don't want to get into trouble, and into the struggle that I have been going through since I wrote the book.

Does the West have an accurate picture of how Saudi women live?

The West got it all wrong. All issues are being raised nowadays. There are a lot of liberals in Saudi Arabia. And there are a lot of traditional conservatives as well. We are trying to live our lives, we are trying to sort our issues between us. That book was a trial to let people to sit and talk about these matters that they were embarrassed to talk about before because they were so sensitive. Here in the States when they read something about the book, they think this Saudi girl is writing about sex before marriage, she is asking for females' right to drink at parties, and homosexuality. They are taking the things that matter to them as Americans. They think these are rights we are fighting for in Saudi. No. The battle is so different, the stuff we are asking for in Saudi are not the stuff the American society would want. We have our own culture. We have our own traditions. We want some of these traditions.

But there are things beyond these traditions that we want to be rid of. For me, I want to change the core of Saudi society. The core in Saudi Arabia is the family, the tribe, the group. While the core outside, in the U.S. or in any other country, is the individual. The individual owns his rights in life. He chooses who to marry, what to do in life, where to work, who to be friends with, who to interact with. In Saudi, you have to have the support of people around you, you have to be part of a group to belong to Saudi society. People are not being appreciated for who they are. We are being appreciated for how our grandfathers were.

Is the novel autobiographical in any way?

No, it's not.

Was Girls of Riyadh ever banned in Saudi Arabia?

There were imams in mosques who said this book should be banned and this girl should not be allowed to speak on behalf of Saudi women because she does not represent Saudi women who are the majority of Saudi females. There are still bookstores that are not willing to sell the book, maybe because they are against what was written in the book.

Did you write the novel for Saudi girls, or any other audience?

Honestly, no. I was trying to write it for myself. I was trying to raise the topics that mattered to me the most. After publishing the book, I was amazed and overwhelmed by the reaction that I was getting from all generations in Saudi. I had people in their 60s and 70s read book, men and women. A lot of the moms came to me saying they want me to write about their generations' problems, they have a lot of issues they want to talk about.

The girls in the novel seem profoundly sad.

It is not just in the girls. I was trying to say even the boys have problems with traditions. Everyone in Saudi is struggling with traditions. There are people who are very, very OK with how life is. That's what they are used to having, and any change may be frightening for them. But there are others who do not really like the lives they are living. They have to accept it because of a lot of reasons, their families, their houses, their tribes, their circles of people. That's why those couples [in the novel], even though both of them want to have the same thing, at the end they do respect their families traditions, because without their Saudi families, there is no hope for them to survive in Saudi.

Faisal is in love and can't act on it.

And Firas, as well. He wanted to marry Sadeem, but because of his image in Saudi society, he did not want to marry a girl who was with a man before him, with Waleed. Rashid, who married Gamrah because his family wanted him to marry her, was in love with Kari in the States. He did what his family wanted him to do, because he knew that he has to have their support to be able to survive within the Saudi society. And that at the end, he felt that choice was wrong, and that he should have stuck to what ever he wanted to have in life. All of these characters want something that their families do not actually approve. It is always a struggle between choosing or following what you want or what your family wants in Saudi. And most of the Saudis follow what their families want.

You mentioned you had to struggle with opposition to Girls of Riyadh?

I got some scary emails. That they know where I live. And know where I go to work. And that I should watch out that they will find me and they will kill me. The most painful emails were the ones attacking my family. They attacked my brothers because they are the males in the family. Living in Saudi, I know how important the male image is. My family was very, very supportive of everything I did. They were behind me all the way. They said I should not pay attention and that what I am doing is for a good cause. And that I should keep doing it.

Did you go to Chicago to escape the reaction?

No, all my brothers did their residencies in the States. They all graduated from undergraduate in Saudi and did their residency in the States. I was just following the path of the family. In my family, we are three physicians and three dentists.

It would have been far more difficult without your family's support?

That's true. I think that for a female to succeed in Saudi Arabia, she has no hope if there are no supportive males in her family, whether it is a father, brother, son. It is always the males in the family who support women. And if they don't want the woman to succeed, then she will never make it.

Your late father played an important role?

He set the rules. He taught my brothers. I am the youngest in the family. They all had this respect for females raised inside them because of my father, they saw the way that my father treated my mother.

I see you are wearing the Islamic hijab, even in Chicago. Why is that?

I started wearing it about three years ago. I reached a state where I wanted to show my devotion and commitment to God. I know that I've always looked at it as part of my religion. I didn't want to do it because I felt I am too young for it. I will do it when I am 50-60 years old. I wanted to look nice nowadays. But I just felt that I'm ready to do it. I wasn't thinking of doing it because of doing interviews three years later. But now I feel that wearing the hijab gives the message to people, when they talk to me in interviews, that this hijab is not really suffocating me, it is not really putting any pressure on me. I'm still an opened minded girl. I'm still open for change and discussion. I can run an intellectual discussion with a man without being shy or feeling hesitant in any way. I am just who I am, and you shouldn't really pay so much attention to what I am wearing in my hair or my clothes.

How is life in Chicago?

The weather is bad (laughs). It is very cold in the winter. I miss home a lot. I can't wait to go back. But living in Chicago is a very different experience from living in Riyadh. Being exposed to the American culture, and more than the American culture, so many different cultures, is actually good for me. It teaches me how to respect others. And it teaches me to accept differences, to deal with these differences, to enjoy life, enjoy friendships. I became more independent. I learned how to do laundry (laughs).

What is your experience of being a Muslim in America these days?

I visited the States without wearing the hijab several times before. I have to say that the way people look at me is so different from when I didn't used to wear the hijab. Nowadays the first thing that comes to anybody's mind when they see me is that I am Muslim. I want people to look behind this hijab. I want them to deal with me as a person, and not spend too much time thinking of what I can do as Muslim and what I can't, if I can drink or not, or if I can have sex before marriage or not. Before, I feel that I can do anything I want, and people would not judge me based on being a Muslim. Nowadays, if I don't smile at somebody's face, then I'm a terrorist because I am wearing hijab and I am not smiling. People really tend to judge Muslims more than they should.

--By Scott MacLeod/Riyadh

When an early version of an Israeli government report lambasted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's handling of the war with Hizballah in Lebanon last summer, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah noted admiringly that unlike Arab governments, Israelis learn from their mistakes.

But the next report by Winograd Commission, the body investigating the conflict, may justify a similarly unflattering comparison between Israel and Hizballah. Retired judge Eliyahu Winograd, the head of the commission, said recently that he will examine claims that the Israeli army committed war crimes.

Human rights groups have accused both the Israeli and Hizballah of war crimes last summer. Israel by firing anti-personnel cluster munitions into populated areas, Hizballah by firing unguided rockets into Israeli cities and towns. But it seems as if only Israeli society is prepared to review the moral consequences of its actions. The Winograd commission agreed to look into the matter in part at the request of parents of Israeli soldiers.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem

Because I spend a lot of time in in countries that have fallen somewhat off the globalization fast track (Syria and Iraq, for example), I've started to become a little clueless about pop culture. So yesterday I foolishly went to the Jerusalem Mall to see the new Harry Potter movie despite the fact that I didn't have an advance ticket and despite the fact that it was Saturday evening. Needless to say I didn't get in. The large crowd in front of the movie theater showed a general disregard for ordered lines, while the ticket sellers kept posting signs in Hebrew with lots of exclamation points. "Do any of those say 'Harry Potter Sold Out?'" I kept asking people, who stared at me -- a single foreign man amid a sea of families -- like I was some kind of sicko.

After giving up on the movie, I tried to compensate by visiting a nearby bookstore chain where the latest Harry Potter book was going on sale for the first time. Like everywhere else, the series is wildly popular in Israel. But the book has been received in different ways by the nation's cultural guardians. On the one hand, religious politicians campaigned against the Friday night worldwide release, which would have violated Shabbat, so most stores in Israel waited until sundown on Saturday to start selling copies. On the other hand, some conservative commentators have lauded the Churchillian undertones of Harry's fight against evil, which they see as relevant in an era of relativism and appeasement. As of yet I haven't heard of anyone complaining about the spread of witchcraft and paganism in the Jewish state.

Anyway, all I wanted to do was take some pictures of Harry Potter fans and the bookstore staff dressed as if for Halloween. Now I admit that I should have gone through the process of explaining that I was a journalist and getting permission before I started snapping away, but it's not like I was trying to spy on troop movements or wanted militants. This is a book about a teenage wizard! Still, it wasn't long before a high-handed staff member told me -- in a tone normally reserved for shoplifters -- to see the store manager post haste, and while worried phone calls were made to corporate public relations, I slunk out of the store thinking I should give up on fantasy fiction and go back to covering Middle Eastern blood feuds.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem

During his 35 years as headmaster of the American School of Tangier, Joe McPhillips had a passion for directing the annual school play, traditionally performed just before graduation. His friend and fellow Tangier expat Paul Bowles, the American novelist and composer, often helped out by composing original scores. One year, another friend, Yves St. Laurent, flew in from Paris to design costumes for a production of Hippolytus. Joe bugged me for years to come over for a performance, but, alas, the closest I ever got was seeing a rehearsal for A Streetcar Named Desire.

I thought that was pretty racy for an Arab country, even for a city as "international" as Tangier, but the kids were deeply into it. The acting of the girl playing Stella was electrifying, even in AST's plain rehearsal hall. A few days later, Joe telephoned me in Cairo, heartbroken, to say that his dazzling girl had been very seriously injured in a car accident. He was devastated over her misfortune and her disappointment at not being able realize her triumph on stage.

This year, tragically, it was Joe who didn't make it to opening night. On June 11, he died at home in Tangier. His sister Lynn Meador says he had suffered a catastrophic aortic valve blockage and died instantly. His body was found at the bottom of a steep flight of stairs, apparently having taken a fall after a heart attack. Even though he was 71, well past the usual retirement age, he had never shown signs of slowing down. "He told me many times that he would die with his boots on, and that's what he did," Karim Benzakour, his friend and AST colleague, told me afterwards.

Joe McPhillips, during a recent rehearsal of The Zoo Story, at the American School of Tangier /Photo courtesy Karim Benzakour

For the 45 years in all that Joe spent in Morocco and serving AST, we owe him an immeasurable debt of gratitude. Few did more than Joe to embody and promote in this part of the world the best of what America represents for many of its citizens--ideals like excellence, creativity, tolerance, freedom, cultural pluralism, individualism and respect for the individual.

Joseph A. McPhillips III was a southern boy from Mobile, Alabama who went up north to attend prep school at Andover and college at Princeton. He was a larger than life character, out of a Faulkner novel. After Princeton, he served a stint in the U.S. military. Afterwards, he traveled the world and landed in Morocco, where he got a teaching job at AST, founded only a decade earlier in 1950. Joe became friends with the bohemians who also made the trek to Morocco in those days, like William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg and Streetcar's author, Tennessee Williams.

Joe's particular art was teaching. Besides being headmaster, he was guidance counselor and English teacher. He was an incredible inspiration to the hundreds of kids who passed through AST, many of whom ended up in some of America's finest universities. "He was the spirit of the school," Karim Benzakour recalled. "It is difficult to speak about the school without without speaking about Joe. He was the pillar. He was the man. There was no place for being approximate. It had to be perfect, on time, precise and well done. He pushed people to the limit, so that sometimes you said, 'My God!' You questioned yourself whether you can continue." AST graduating classes are tiny--there are only 300 students, K through 12--but Joe often attracted speakers worthy of university commencements, among them Pierre Berge, Bernard Henry-Levy, Oliver Stone, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Princess Lalla Hasna, daughter of the late King Hassan II and brother of Morocco's current monarch, Mohammed VI.

The last time I saw Joe was in May 2004, a few weeks before graduation exercises. He proudly showed me construction work, financed by a $500,000 gift to the school from American painter and Tangier expat Marguerite McBey, for a new gym and swimming pool. Over the years, the American community in Tangier had dwindled and the school's enrollment had become overwhelmingly Moroccan. We talked about his latest project, an American school that he established in Marrakech. Begun in a simple house with one teacher in 1995, he had just inaugurated a proper campus designed by architect Charles Boccara.

That evening, after drinks at his fabulous house overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar--an earlier gift from Marguerite McBey--we had dinner at one of his favorite hangouts, a simple Italian restaurant called Casa d'Italia. He spent most of the evening speaking with great knowledge and eloquence, though it was not his field, about the calamity that the Bush administration had visited on the Middle East. He was dismayed by what he felt was the influence of right-wing Christian fundamentalists from his South on Bush's policies toward the Islamic world. He was so steamed up--this was about a year after the invasion of Iraq--that he planned to spend his annual summer holiday back home volunteering for John Kerry to get Bush out of office.

Joe got Jimmy Buffett, another southern boy, to give this year's commencement address. Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, about division and alienation in America, was the pre-graduation school play, and Albee himself was due to attend but cancelled his trip. In the evening after the last rehearsal, Joe took his fatal fall. It was a theatrical parting worthy of Joe's colorful life, Benzakour remarked to me afterwards. The performances of The Zoo Story played to packed houses, with what seemed like half of Tangier turning up to bid farewell to Joe.

That wasn't the final curtain. When Paul Bowles died in 1999 after a lifetime in Tangier, Joe personally carried his ashes back to the U.S., and had them interred in the Bowles family plot in Lakemont, N.Y. Joe, on the other hand, was determined to stay in Morocco and be buried on the grounds of his beloved school. In the end, the Moroccan authorities said no to that, arguing in effect that if they granted Joe's wish, you'd have alot of other crazy Americans wanting to be buried all over Morocco. So Joe was laid to rest at the Anglican cemetery of Tangier, a city that will never forget him.

--By Scott MacLeod

Looking north to Lebanon (left) and Syria (right)

Occupied and annexed by Israel after the 1967 war with Syria, the Golan Heights rise like a table of volcanic rock at the top of the Jordan Valley and the Sea of Galilee. Yesterday, I drove up here with photographer Ilan Mizhrahi, in part because I appreciate visiting those parts of Israel that I've seen from the other side of the border where I live in Lebanon and Syria.

But we're also here because the Golan Heights are one of the major stumbling blocks to peace in the Middle East. Syrian President Bashar Al Assad this week repeated his call for the return of the Golan as a main condition of peace between Syria and Israel. But Israelis are as wary as ever about trading land for peace -- Gaza after the Israeli pullout has become a haven for chaos -- and doubtful that Syria will stop supporting Palestinian and Lebanese militants even after signing a peace treaty.

Still, the Syrians living in the Golan Heights -- most of whom are Druze Muslims -- have accommodated fairly well to Israeli occupation. Unlike the West Bank and Gaza, which have large Arab populations, there are just four Arab towns in the Golan. The inhabitants speak Arabic and Hebrew, run seemingly prosperous businesses, and mingle easily on the streets with Israeli soldiers. "I've got many Israeli friends," said Yahyah Abu Shaheen, a 51 year-old contractor whom we met in the town of Bukata. "We've grown up together and we're human beings." But while many Golanese Druze have Israeli ID cards, most refuse to become Israeli citizens, either out of loyalty to Syria, or out of concern that they might be seen as traitors if the territory returns to Syria.

And Yahah and his neighbors chafe under the restrictions that the closed border imposes upon them, cutting them off from their friends, family, and country. There's just one United Nations crossing point between Syria and the occupied Golan, and almost the only people allowed to pass are those Golanese leaving their homes (perhaps forever) to marry someone on the other side. One of Yahyah's daughters married a Syrian cousin and moved back to the motherland earlier this year; while Yahyah's son also married a Syrian cousin (in the photo below) who's homesick for Damascus.

With military technology that's vastly superior to Syria's, Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights is no longer the strategic concern it once was. Still, it's a major staging ground of military operations, especially in these tense times as both sides are cautiously preparing for another war.

At the end of the day we bumped into a mechanized unit wrapping up exercises by loading their battle tanks on tractor trailers and leaving their Vietnam-era personnel carriers parked by the side of the road. "Mind if we take one for spin?" I called out the departing troops. "We're leaving our guard dog," said one of the soldiers as he pointed to a stray. "And he's a real beast."

--Andrew Lee Butters/Golan Heights

The big local story in Saudi Arabia this summer has been the growing pressure on the religious police, officially known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The commission acts as the conservative Kingdom's morality police, enforcing a strict Wahhabi code of behavior--and is notorious for excesses that terrorize Saudi men and women alike. Commission members are known for effectively abducting women who are deemed to be showing too much skin from beneath their full-length black abaya gowns in public. Such women will then disappear for hours or even days to a commission office for interrogation. If you are unlucky enough to be the male driver of a woman accused of exhibiting loose morals--women, you'll remember, are forbidden from driving in Saudi Arabia-- you may get beat up in the course of the woman's arrest.

(Saudi women driving is an issue for another day; but for what it's worth, the head-to-toe abaya is not itself an impediment to navigating a motor vehicle. In Cairo, I see women in the totally enveloping attire--even wearing black gloves, in the summer-winding their way through traffic, often with a couple kids in the back seat. Women in abayas drive everywhere else in the Gulf, too. In Saudi Arabia, there's a fatwa, or religious ruling, by the Wahhabi sheikhs against women driving.)

There's been growing public anger toward the commission particularly since 2002, when 15 Saudi girls died in a school fire in Mecca. Commission members were widely blamed for the deaths after allegedly barring the girls from exiting the building for the safety of the street because the students were not wearing their abayas. In the emergency, they had not had the chance to go back to their lockers and put them on.

Sp the commission has increasingly been on the defensive against an angry public. A Saudi woman friend tells me that in her experience, the religious police have backed off considerably from harassing women in the last year or so. But a full-blown scandal erupted in May involving the alleged beating death of a Riyadh man while in the commission's custody. Saudi newspapers and websites have been filled with articles and blogs both attacking and praising the commission and its work.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been notoriously easy on the commission, which is part of the Kingdom's powerful Wahhabi establishment. But this week, the Arab News reported, Naif's ministry ordered the commission to strictly abide by the regulations governing the commission and hand anyone accused of morality offenses immediately over to regular police officers. It seems that cold-blooded murder is too much, if that is what it was, even for the normally sacrosanct religious police.

Saudi journalist Raid Qusti has reported extensively on the commission; read his report on the latest developments in the Arab News.

--By Scott MacLeod/Riyadh

Wonders of the World: The Dome of the Rock and Swedish Tourist Girls

Since I'm back in Jerusalem to cover for Tim while he's on vacation, I spent yesterday morning at the Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) to fulfill a promise to a religious Iraqi friend in Baghdad. I had told him I would pray for his safety at the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic shrine that now covers the site of where the great Jewish temple of Solomon once stood.

This was something of a secret mission. Non-Muslims are forbidden to pray here by order of the Palestinian Waqf, the Islamic guardians of the site. In the past this hasn't been such a problem. It's not a particularly sacred site for Christians, and traditional Jewish law forbids Jews from setting foot on site, which they call the Temple Mount, lest they inadvertently step on the Holiest of Holies, the inner sanctum of the temple, the exact location of which is now lost to time. But recently, extremist Jewish groups have decided that a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount might help speed the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple, and have tried to hold prayers here, while others have hatched plots to blow up the Dome of the Rock. In 2000, a visit by Ariel Sharon to Temple Mount sparked riots that marked the beginning of the Second Intifada. Afterwards, security on the Temple Mount became very tight.

But yesterday, Israeli police were letting tourists flood in, and the Waqf didn't seem to mind, a sign perhaps that tensions in the Old City have eased for now. So I found a shade tree, and despite being a pork-eating infidel, murmured what I remembered of the Muslim hadith, and prayed that the peace of Jerusalem might find it's way to Baghdad. Hope that's a blessing not a curse.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Jerusalem