The Original Star-Crossed Lovers

By Supriya Savkoor

Long before Romeo and Juliet, there was Laila and Majnu, the ultimate star-crossed lovers who generations of Middle Eastern, Asian, and African cultures celebrated through poetry, plays, art, and later film. 

The original story is based on a real event, about a Bedouin shepherd named Qays (or Qais) ibn al-Mulawwah back in the 7^th century. Qays fell in love with Laila (or Layla) bint Mahdi ibn Sa’d, a young girl from his tribe, and wrote many poems about his undying love for her. However, when Qays asked Laila’s father for her hand in marriage, he was refused, and soon, Laila was married off to another man and moved away. Qays became devastated and left home to wander the wilderness and deserts where he continued to compose poetry but quickly descended into madness. He thus earned the nickname Majnun or Majnu, meaning mad or crazy.

Qays’s poetry and the Arab stories about him and his love were already popular and well known in the region during those times and were told and retold many times over the centuries until the great Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi wrote what became the masterpiece version. Ganjavi, who coincidentally first wrote a famous epic poem about Farhad and Shireen, the star-crossed lovers Heidi wrote about, researched both secular and mystical sources about Laila and Majnun and used techniques from the Persian tradition of poetry to make the tragic love story more vivid, boosting its popularity immensely.

After Ganjavi’s version came out – three centuries before Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet – the story of Laila and Majnun spread like wildfire through Azerbaijan, Turkey, and eventually to India, where it’s still considered the penultimate story of star-crossed lovers. 

Take a look at some of the art this famous couple inspired.

From Mashhad, Iran, Majnun eavesdrops on Layla's camp

 

An Afghani rendering of the young lovers

A Tajik miniature painting shows
Layla and Majnu as young classmates

A tapestry from Mughal India shows
a desolate Majnu out in the wilderness

From a modern Malaysian performance

The story is so entrenched, so much a part of the cultures it spread to, the term Majnun or Majnu is commonly used in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, North Africa, even Somalia to describe anyone who is madly in love, as does the phrase “Laila-Majnu” itself (often describing blushing newlyweds, for example). In Turkey, where Majnun is known as Mecnun, when someone says they “feel like Mecnun,” it means they feel possessed, often by love. 

It could be said that most popular Bollywood movies retell the Laila and Majnu story in one way or another, but India has made at least a dozen or more films specifically about Laila and Majnu in many languages, including, curiously, Persian, Malay, and Pashtun. The Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov set the story to music and made what is considered to be the Middle East’s first opera, premiering in Baku in 1908. In the 19^th century, Isaac D’Israeli (the father of Benjamin D’Israeli, the future British prime minister) translated the epic poem from the Persian into the English, expanding the audience to the west.

Beyond the Indian films, the story has been referenced in much popular media, including Sufi qawwali poem-songs, bestselling novels by authors Orhan Pamuk and Khaled Hosseini, the famous Layla song by Eric Clapton (which even quotes a line from Qays's poetry), and the kitchy disco song Laila from the Indian film Qurbani. The couple has also been the subject of a Tajik Soviet film-ballet from the 1960s, at least one Iranian film from the 1930s, and a contemporary Yo Yo Ma concert.

Over time, the story has taken on slightly different retellings. In one recounting, Layla and Majnun were classmates, that Majnun wrote poems to Layla instead of paying attention to the teacher, and so received lashings in class. Every time Majnun was beaten, Layla would magically bleed, thus causing her family the consternation that leads to them separating the couple. In another version, Layla’s brother Tabrez protests Majnun’s love for his sister, and in the midst of their quarrel, Majnun accidentally kills Tabrez, which incurs the wrath of Layla’s family.

The graves in Bijnore 

In one rural town in India, many believe that the couple hailed, not from the Arab world, but from the north Indian state of Sindh. And when Laila’s family opposed the union, the pair sought refuge in the tiny Rajasthani desert village of Bijnore in India, where they eventually died. The local government maintains a tomb that purportedly contains the couple’s bodies. Not far from the tomb is a well that the locals say the couple regularly visited together. Each year, the town hosts a two-day fair in June to commemorate the couple, and hundreds of newlyweds and lovers attend.

Whatever actually happened, fact and fiction have blended to create one of legend and literature's most enduring star-crossed couples.

A Taste of Traditional Chinese Medicine

A TCM pharmacy.
Photo by Sam Steiner.

By Beth Green

Many times when you visit the doctor or pharmacy in China, you’re given a choice: traditional treatments made from herbs and mysterious ingredients, or Western-patented pharmaceuticals.

The first city I lived in in China, in Southern China, had a specific hospital for Traditional Chinese Medicine (often just called TCM). At the bus stop outside it, passengers boarded wearing white bandages stained with brown poultices. Pharmacies usually featured both the comforting little rectangular boxes of pills that spelled out the ingredients in both Chinese and English and large dispensaries full of odd natural items that often looked like hedge-clippings or leftovers from a taxidermist’s shop. The air near the hospital and in the pharmacies had a distinctive smell—bitter and earthy.

I was always curious about experiencing TCM, but luckily I didn’t really need a doctor’s opinion in China until the second year I lived there. We’d just moved to a rural city in Southwestern China, with different weather and different food. My skin was not reacting well to the changes—and, distressingly, I’d picked up impetigo from some of the children I was teaching. After an Internet self-diagnosis of skin cancer (my self-diagnoses always include the worst possible interpretation of symptoms), I asked a co-worker to take me to the hospital across the road and see what a real doctor said.

At this hospital, and others I’ve been to since, when you come in to register you pick whether you want to see a nurse for a few yuan, a nurse with more experience for one yuan more, or a specialist doctor for a whopping seven yuan (about a dollar at that time). Not one to skimp, I chose to visit the specialist dermatologist.

The dermatologist had no waiting room; all of her patients grouped together in her small office on stools and listened avidly to her diagnosis and recommendation for the other patients while waiting for their names to be called.

When it was my turn ( I was extremely conscious of the ten pairs of ears and eyes in the room) the doctor didn’t ask me any questions other than if my skin itched. I had my co-worker explain my difficulties but she simply nodded, had me stick out my tongue, and made a note.

“Will you take TCM?” she asked me in Chinese.

“It’s not cancer?” I replied.

She laughed, and so did the other patients behind me.

A TCM store in Hong Kong.
Photo by Brian Jeffery Beggerly.

Relieved of that, at least, I said, “sure, why not?” and so began a six-week course of TCM. The doctor explained that I would see results less quickly than I would if we used Western medicine, but that hopefully I’d experience better skin and more energy after using the TCM.

The treatment was in part restrictive: I had to limit my intake of spicy and oily food, milk products, sugar, and caffeine. I had to eat more green vegetables. So far so good.

It included a topical treatment, which involved combining a paste with the clear contents of a glass vial, stirring it, and then applying it daily to affected areas with a delicate wooden stick. The glass vial was the most frustrating, because it didn’t have a lid: you had to break the tiny top off of it without shattering the rest of the vial and dropping glass shards in the paste; without dropping it on the floor, smashing it and getting glass splinters all over the bathroom; without cracking it and cutting your fingers. It took a few times—and return visits to ask for more medicine—to get this right.

I was also told to up my vitamin intake, which I could thankfully do with nice, comforting, Western-looking tablets.

And I had to drink four servings of a special brewed medicine every day.

The prescription for all this medicine was several pages long, because the doctor listed twenty-some ingredients.

I knew that the prescription was lengthy, but I didn’t realize what exactly was in store for me until my co-worker and I went to the pharmacy counter to pick up the medicines: three plastic shopping bags full of powders, leaves, and twigs.

“Um, what do I do with this?” I asked my friend.

“You cook it,” she said.

Um, yeah.

Medicines before they are cooked.
Photo by Bernhard Scheid.

Luckily, the town had one pharmacy that catered to people who were as incompetent as me in the medicine-preparation department and with a little negotiating, the proprietors agreed to cook up and bag my medicine, even though I hadn’t purchased the initial ingredients from them. It took them a day to prepare, but soon I had about four gallons of a root beer colored drink, hermetically sealed in several dozen small plastic baggies.

I was told to keep this refrigerated and drink it hot every day under certain conditions that I forget now. To warm it up, it worked best if I put a baggie in a bath of hot water for a few minutes, then snipped a corner off the plastic and slurped it out in one foul-tasting go.

Or, sometimes I put it in a coffee cup and pretended I was drinking really bad filtered coffee.

It was a fussy, bewildering way to find a cure, but the impetigo cleared right up, and soon my skin was behaving itself too. I went back to the doctor several more times, for more medicine, until finally she gave me the all-clear.

I have always wondered what was in the medicine she prescribed, but at the end of the day, I’m just happy it worked.

What experiences have you had at foreign hospitals?

A Portable Exhibit: Review of Steve McCurry's "Portraits" for iPad

By Beth Green

The best art exhibition I’ve seen recently fits in my travel purse.

A photo collage tribute to McCurry's "Afghan Girl"
by Flickr user francisshanahan. 

While nothing will replace for me the experience of seeing art in the flesh—of examining a larger-than-life image in a quiet, contemplative atmosphere and the fun of puzzling out what the artist and the curator want me to “get”—I am blown away by the quality and enjoyment factor of the photographs exhibited in the “Portraits” app for iPad, a collection of images of faces and places by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry.

If you don’t recognize his name—I didn’t—you’re sure to know at least one of his photos shown in this touch-screen gallery visit: “Afghan Girl,” the 1984 portrait of a green-eyed Pashtun refugee. It was on the front cover of National Geographic magazine in June, 1985, and is likely the magazine’s best recognized image. Many people liken the photo’s intensity to that of the “Mona Lisa.”

Swiping through the 100 images collected in the app, it’s clear that the intensity in “Afghan Girl” is one of McCurry’s signatures. Traveling the world for National Geographic—you can search the app for photos from different countries by tapping a map and browse receipts and scrapbook-worthy tidbits of his travels in another section—McCurry has captured the profundity of people’s life experiences again and again. Elderly believers in France hoping for a miracle cure in Lourdes. A little girl pounding grain in Niger.  An eleven-year-old bare-chested gold miner in the Philippines. In his frank images, the viewer can interpret the stories of whole lives.

In the integrated 23-minute video narrated by McCurry, he says that he chooses his subjects for the depth of expression on their faces. While he’s walking on the street and browsing crowds for potential people to approach with his request for a portrait, he looks for the “intrinsic story written on their face,” he tells us in the video. I was surprised that McCurry says most of his portraits are taken in just five minutes; since he tends to find people who are busy or on their way to another place, he doesn’t want to ask for too much of their time.

Some of the people featured are ones we know are busy: activist Aung San Suu Kyi, actor Robert De Niro, and author Paul Theroux. But most of the portraits are of humble, everyday people, featured in their workday clothes, going about their business. There’s the Tibetan woman by a fighter jet in Lhasa, 2000; an engineer with clasped hands in Kashmir; a woman selling paintings from her car in Italy; Dubliners waiting for a bus.

After I get past the intensity of the eyes in these pictures, the next element that draws me in is the sense of place from the photos; the feeling of anticipation, of guessing what scenes are beyond the borders of the portrait. The woman practicing her cello in the mirror in France—is she about to give a performance, in her red jacket? Does the boy at the door in Mauritania invite McCurry to go inside, or is he too shy? Why is the Burmese woman, with her neck elongated by rings, laughing?

It’s amazing that, in the short amount of time McCurry says he is able to capture these street-side images, he’s able to harness the light in such a way that each one looks like a studio portrait. In the app’s video, he cites Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio as his inspiration. What would these painters have done with a camera, I wonder? Probably something similar to what McCurry does.

The app is available on iTunes, and, at time of writing, is free to download. For non-iPad-toting readers, many of McCurry’s excellent travel photos can be seen on his blog and on his Facebook page.

History: Reread and Rewritten

By Beth Green

One of the biggest thrills for me when researching a place to visit—whether for tourism or for living abroad—is reading about its history. I have written here before about reading a book just because I like the setting. But I also seek out works of both fiction and nonfiction to flesh out my concept of what a place was like at particular moments in time.

Following is a short list of a few historical books about China I often recommend to friends and other travelers.

* Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang, is one of those sweeping, epic tales that makes you want to flip right back to the start after finishing the last page. Part memoir, part novelized biography of the author’s mother and grandmother, Wild Swans tells the story of a family as well as a nation. From her grandmother’s bound feet to her mother’s work with the Communist Party, and finally to Chang’s emigration, Wild Swans illustrates the great changes China has undergone better than any other book I’ve read on the subject. At the time I read it, the book was banned in China. I got it from an expat friend, who got it from a friend, who brought it in from Hong Kong. And yes, I passed it on.

*Journey to the West, attributed to Wu Cheng’En. Often called just Monkey when in translation in the West, this is one of the four great classical novels of China. It describes the pilgrimage of a monk from China to India, on a quest to bring Buddhist scrolls back to his homeland. There is evidence the monk, Xuan Zang, was a real historical figure, but I’m guessing that the tale’s other characters are not: Sun Wu Kong, a monkey king; Zhu Bai Jie, an awakened pig; and Sha Wu Jing, an immortal general fallen from service in the heavenly court. If you travel in Xi’an or the western parts of China you’ll often find references to this party’s legendary journey.

*River Town and Oracle Bones, by Peter Hessler.  These two books about journalist Hessler’s experiences, travels, and friendships in China since the 1990s are titles I often recommend to people who ask me for something to read about China’s contemporary history. (I mentioned River Town in my post about the Yangtze River, here.) Hessler moved to a small town in Sichuan province in the 1990s as a Peace Corps volunteer. His books reflect the amazing cultural and social changes that have taken place since that time, and also the changes in his own perceptions of China. He’s got a third book now, Country Driving, which I keep meaning to read.

*1491: The Year China Discovered the World, by Gavin Menzies. Probably known to my friends and family as the book I love to hate, I often recommend people read this book even though I doubt it’s historically accurate. (I’m not the only one. There was considerable controversy about this book’s claims.) Basically, the author asserts that China discovered the Americas and Antarctica before Columbus. I’m willing to accept that as a possibility, but then Menzies goes on to say that the Chinese influence from landings and shipwrecks on their voyages forms the basis for much of indigenous tradition in the Americas.

That’s where I get skeptical. However, what is fascinating to me about this book is the reception it got within China—my students loved it. The government loved it. It was featured on the news. It was widely available for sale (unlike Wild Swans, as I mentioned above, which features actual history.) So I recommend this book, because it has resonated with a huge population—it shows what they would like their history to reveal. Menzies followed up this book with two books I’ve yet to read:  1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance and The Lost Empire of Atlantis.

Do you have some favorite titles about the history of a place? Add them in the comments!

Travel Snapshot: Easter in the Philippines

Easter week, or Semana Santa, is one of the most important holidays in the Philippines.
Businesses shut down, workers return home for a visit, and many take part in processions, like this one,
photographed in Cebu City by D.C. Pelka. 

Sweet Treats and Chocolate Hills

By Beth Green

Quick. Name me an Asian chocolatier.

Can you do it?

Chocolate is a ubiquitous sweet worldwide, as much in the Eastern Hemisphere as in the Western. But here it’s an imported sin, a luxurious nibble that has some aura of otherness about it.

Except, of course, in the Philippines. The Spanish, those plant-introducing conquistadores, brought cocoa to the Philippines in the 1600s, and cocoa farming has been a commercial concern here since the 1950s. Although the impact of Philippine cocoa is negligible on the world market—most cocoa production seems to be in Cote d’Ivoire, according to Wikipedia—the domestic market here is chock-full of great chocolate. I don’t mean candy bars either—foodstuffs made with actual cacao, like cakes and shakes, are just plain awesome in the Philippines.

However, if you Google “chocolate” and “Philippines” together, one of the first entries you’ll find isn’t for a confectioner’s. Or a baker’s. Or even for a farmer. It’s for the Chocolate Hills, a curious land formation that is unique to Bohol, an island province.

The Chocolate Hills are conical mounds, some 100 feet high or more, that rise up steeply, giving way to rounded tops, and are covered by grasses. Seeing one of these hills might remind you of a backyard anthill a thousand times high. Except, you’re multiplying that thousand-times-magnified anthill by one thousand hills, creating a vast, strange landscape that’s somewhere between bumpy and beautiful. There are, according to a blog on the Bohol provincial government’s website, about 1,200 of these hills, a number that’s hard to comprehend when you climb up one and look out to the horizon filled with the same round hills.

Legend has it that giants made this crazy, carbuncular landscape. Either fighting giants or lovesick giants, too preoccupied by their over-sized emotions to have a care about the breasts of earth they pushed up. Science gives us an interesting answer too: tectonic forces pushed the limestone seabed above water, and then rain and wind wore them down to Hershey’s Kisses of karst.

In the wet season, they'd be better named the "Mint Hills."

But how did they get the name “Chocolate Hills?” Because you grow chocolate there? Because they’re shaped like chocolate drops? Because an old place name happens to sound like the English word chocolate? Because when you go to the visitor’s center they give you free chocolate? These were all my guesses when we traveled to see them on my first visit to the Philippines, in 2011. But I was being too literal, and my guesses, even that tempting last one, were all wrong.

The Chocolate Hills are named after the hue of the grass that grows on the limestone slopes; when it dries up once a year, it turns the thousand smooth hills a chocolatey color—a treat, but only for the eyes.