Category: faces

Faces of India

Two young slumdogs at Calcutta’s Sealdah Railway Station

There is little doubt that India is the most photogenic place in the world. Yes, the landscape is beautiful and diverse, and the monuments tremendous, but most of this is due to the incredibly colorful and beautiful people of the country. Derek likes to say that Indians, northern ones in particular, have wet eyes (he suggests maybe it’s all the ghee) that make them particularly good photo subjects. And of course they are some of the most accommodating, playful and gracious anywhere, making for ideal models. With no further ado, some portraits from India.

Indian soldiers at Delhi Airport flying out to serve as UN peacekeeping forces. UN peacekeeping is a financially attractive proposition for relatively poor countries.

Celebrating Holi in Calcutta

Local boy on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Toy Train. The Indian Himalayas see many more Asian faces, including those of Tibetan refugees.

Bengali man, Calcutta. Calcutta’s fame to the rest of the world is, unfortunately in part due to Mother Teresa’s work, that of wretched poverty, but within India it is actually a center of culture and high education.

In this man, who was praying at the Nakhoda Mosque in Calcutta, one can see perhaps an ethnic residue of the Mughal’s Central Asian heritage

On the steps of Fatehpur Sikri’s Friday Mosque

Inside Fatehpur Sikri’s Friday Mosque. The keffiyeh, an Arab accessory, is not common in India, but looks cute on the first boy!

A Rajput woman, taking in Agra Rajasthan. Even among Indians, Rajputs stand out as exotic and beautifully accoutered.

Rajput woman at Tirumalai Temple in Tamil Nadu

Handsome Rajputs near Rasathani, Rajasthan

Sufi, Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi

At Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah

Sikh man, Old Delhi

A fashionable young hijra in Delhi (see post of 2008.08.29)

In Old Delhi

Young man near Daulatabad, Maharashtra

Schoolgirl in Bombay

Porter in Bombay’s Crawford Market

Fellow tourists at Golconda Fort outside Hyderabad. The dress is austere, the attitudes not.

Cochin, Kerala. Indian smiles can be among the fullest and most ecstastic. The relatively dark skin of this South Indian man contrasts sharply against his perfect set of pearly whites.

Schoolgirl in the Keralan backwaters

Young Girl in Varkala, Kerala

Domestic tourist at Kanniyakumari, or Cape Comorin, the southern tip of India

A Nepali guard in a Pondicherry store. To the rest of the world, India may seem a poor country and a source of labor, but for even poorer Nepalis, India is a destination to look for work.

Young girl, Karaikkudi, Tamil Nadu

Bus Station, Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu. In a country of great extremes, some look crazier than most!

Boy with puppies, Madurai, Tamil Nadu

Cute little beggar in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu

Homeless woman in Madras

A (playful) young priest inside Thanjavur’s big temple in Tamil Nadu

From inside Madurai’s Sri Meenakshi Temple

Sadhu, Varanasi

faces Morocco photo

Faces of Morocco

Since I’ve already written so much about ethnicity and race in Morocco (see posts of 09.01.11 and 09.01.24), this post will be mostly pictures and not words. In my post of 08.11.09, I thanked the Turks (Turkic men in particular) for being so accommodating in posing for pictures, perhaps to the point of vanity. Moroccans deserve to be known for the opposite; we encountered in Morocco outright hostility, even from people who just happened to fall within the frame of, say, a picture of a market. Given the volume of tourism in Morocco, one wonders whether the locals might take a more relaxed approach to tourists’ snapshots.

On to more photos…

One of the things that makes Morocco so colorful a destination, especially in winter, is the dress of the local men–most Moroccan men wear peak-hooded djellabas (or galabiyas), almost druid-like in appearance.

Even better, worn with a fez underneath.

Some “traditional dress” is of course in part for show, in this country of much tourism, but is nonetheless colorful.

The water salesman–sometimes actually selling water!

Women and girls are more out and about and visible in Morocco, in both rural areas and in cities, than in any of the other Arab countries that we visited.

A relatively rare degree of cover.

faces Mauritania photo

Faces of Mauritania

As I mentioned in my post of 08.12.12, Mauritania is about 30% Moor, 40% mixed Moor/black African and 30% black African. As one might expect of a country with such a complicated and evenly balanced racial makeup, identity politics is complicated in Mauritania: while the country’s leadership, at least since the 70s, has identified itself with the Arab world (becoming a member of the Arab League in 1973), a significant part of the country essentially forms a continuation of black French West Africa. Aside from the by-color black population that has been integrated into the now-dominant Moorish, Arabic-speaking culture, there are also sub-Saharan black Africans, especially in the bigger cities.

For all of the mixedness of the country, the riots of 1989 (when the Moorish and sub-Saharan black African populations came into violent conflict, leading to the forced migration of many Moors from Senegal and black Africans from Mauritania) and the August 2008 coup, Mauritania seemed quite peaceful and stable to us, a sparsely-populated desert country with room for all.

Some of the black African residents of Mauritania

Some of the Moorish residents of Mauritania

By skin color, black, but, as far as we could tell, individuals whose families have long been culturally integrated into the Hassaniya-Arabic speaking culture of the Moors

faces Mali photo Senegal

Faces of Senegal and Mali

For all of its political and economic problems, and relative lack of tourist sites and infrastructure, there are some things about sub-Saharan Africa that are for travelers just about incomparable to anywhere else in the world. The two things that pop up most easily in our mind are the colors and the people. Both can be described with the same adjectives: brash, engaging, exuberant. It is something of a paradox for us; in some ways, Africans can be incredibly timid and mild-mannered, but most of the rest of the time, they can be among the most engaging, gregarious and openly friendly people in the world. This is not the sort of polite welcome and forbearance that one receives in Southeast Asia, or the almost formal hospitality one receives in the Middle East, but a sort of slap-on-the-back friendliness that is not afraid to make jokes and laugh, a smile that is almost overly broad, full of life. I do not have too much to say about these photos, but consider them with this in mind: Africans may be poor but their persons do not speak poverty and despair, but vitality and joy. I begin first with photographs from Senegal, with its Wolof ethnic plurality, then move on to Mali, where up north around Timbuktu live the fair-skinned berber Tuareg. Ile de Goree, near Dakar, Senegal This elegant older woman was awaiting her son, who was supposed to arrive by ferry to celebrate her birthday but was running late. For whatever reason, we imagined her as a sort of Miss Havisham, coming to the ferry dock every day, thinking that it was her birthday and looking for her estranged son.
St. Louis, Senegal The stick in her mouth is a sort of toothbrush; the apparent effectiveness of such traditional tools makes one wonder why we bother with plastic brushes and saccharine-laden paste.

Mali

A Fula/Peul herder in characteristic hat

A girl exhibiting a confidence that seems, to me, typically African
Tattoos, especially on women and quite often on faces, are worn by “tribal” women around the world.
From Timbuktu. The fairer people are Tuareg, a berber people who inhabit the regions around the Sahara in Mali, Niger, Algeria and Libya. The Tuareg held black Africans as slaves until quite recently, and are said by some to continue to hold slaves. The practice was defended to us as a domestic/familial link at this point rather than mere ownership.

From the Dogon Country

Back to Bamako
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Bosnia faces photo religion Serbia

Faces of Muslim Balkans

Just a few pictures from our few days among Muslims in the Balkans. The first picture below is of the Albanian-ethnic attendant of a mosque in Belgrade, Serbia; the rest are of Bosnians in Sarajevo. At an “ethnic” level, the story of Bosnia and Hercegovina is remarkably similar to the story of Cyprus (see posts of 10.27 and 10.28). Before the recent conflict, we were told, Muslim and Christian Bosnians thought of each other as people of the same “nationality” but merely different religions. Since the disintegration of the Yugoslav Republic and the subsequent conflicts, Christian Bosnians have been restyled as Serbs or Croats, with the “Serbian” Bosnians in particular identifying themselves with the Serbs of Serbia (even flying the Serbian flag within their semi-autonomous breakaway Republika Srpska) rather than the Muslim Bosnians, or Bosniaks, with whom they had lived together for hundreds of years. We were told that it is not possible to tell Christian and Muslim Bosnians apart, just as with Christian and Muslim Cypriots, but as all of the pictures of Bosnians below were taken within the city of Sarajevo, the subjects are most likely Muslim. As you can see, Muslims Bosnians look typically Slavic–they are genetically no different from their Christian neighbors. Few Bosnian women wear headscarves and few Bosnian men beards.

faces photo Turkey

Faces of Turkey

Man fishing, Galata Bridge, Istanbul

Not much to say in this post, except that perhaps another “Turkic trait” (see post of 11.05) is that Turks like to have their pictures taken. This goes especially for the men, but to some extent even for Turkish women, whose Islamic sense of modesty does not seem to reach as far as their Arab sisters. I chalk this up not only to an eagerness to be accommodating (especially to a foreign tourist) but perhaps also a little bit of vanity–from Istanbul to Tashkent, Turks love to see themselves on that little LCD screen, and then pose endlessly, drawing into the frame their family members and neighbors. We thank them heartily for their cooperation!

Two children from Northern Cyprus in school uniform

Children, Sultanhani, Turkey

A couple ladies, from Ankara and Istanbul. Both of these women happen to be wearing headscarves, but that is far from typical in less traditional parts of the country, such as Istanbul.

Young boys, Istanbul. The second boy is actually an Uzbek, from Uzbekistan, now a resident of Istanbul’s Kumkapi neighborhood (see post of 11.08).

Some young men. The first, as well as the man pictured first in this post, shows the surprisingly fair coloration that some Turks have; the third reminded us physically of someone one might meet in Tajikistan or Pakistan’s Hunza Valley; and the fifth is simply too good-looking to be selling fish sandwiches, even if in highly visible Eminonu, Istanbul.

Middle aged and older.

faces Palestine photo

Faces of Palestine

We were not in the Palestinian Territories for long, but I thought it still meaningful to do this post showing you some of the people we met in Arab Palestine. One of the aims of this blog is to be able to put a face on a place, and few places need this more than Palestine. Note the absence of rocks and molotov cocktails.

Children, Nablus

Older man, Nablus

“Arab” dress is uncommon in coastal and modern Palestine (cf. post of 10.13)

Aramaic-speaking Christian cobbler of Syrian origin, Bethlehem. More than 80 years old, he told us that to live in the West Bank is to “live in a prison.”

Young men, Ramallah. Ramallah, just outside of Jerusalem, is currently the commercial and logistical hub of the West Bank. The man with the Major League Baseball hat was a Palestinian-American visiting relatives, and greeted us with a double-take invoking, American-accented “How ya doin’?” The Jewish reverse-diaspora into Palestine has resulted in a massive diaspora of Arab Palestinians all over the world, and in our time in the Middle East we have met Palestinian refugees in Syria, Jordan and the Gulf, and from the U.S., Canada and Europe.

A Samaritan. A good one? Certainly seemed nice enough. The Samaritans form a “sect” of Judaism, and are now citizens of Israel, but have lived peacefully among the Palestinian Arabs for many hundreds of years.

Muslims of African descent, Jerusalem. These children are part of a community of 2000 or so Palestinians of African descent–principally Senegal, Niger, Chad and Sudan–who live in the Old City of Jerusalem near the Temple Mount. Many families have lived in Jerusalem for some 150 years.

faces Jordan photo

Faces of Jordan

Post author By pkk
Post date October 13, 2008

Politically, the region that is called the Levant is now divided into five pieces–Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine and Jordan. But there are ways to divide the area into historically/culturally meaningful chunks beyond national boundaries. One is to consider Jewish Israel as a separate entity onto itself, while considering the predominantly Arab regions of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan together. Another is to consider the region as made up of three major religious communities: Arab Muslims, Arab Christians and Israeli Jews. A third is to consider Syria and Lebanon together, as they share a great deal in common and were the countries of the early twentieth century French Mandate, and Israel, Palestine and Jordan together, as being part of the British colonial world. No doubt there are many other ways to think about this complex region.

I believe, however, that the best way of thinking about the Levant is coastal and non-coastal. Over much of history, whether a given region was within striking distance of an active port meant a great deal (most of the world’s population still lives near a coast or navigable river), and this was no less the case in the Levant. Coastal Levant, meaning Lebanon, Syria as far east as the great cities of Aleppo and Damascus and Israel/Palestine, had constant communication with the Mediterranean world, for better or for worse. Over thousands of years these areas saw countless empires, people and ideas come and go. The desert interior, meaning most of Jordan and the Syrian desert, were one step removed from the great movements on the coast, a relative wilderness. Coastal Levant is a world of ancient walled cities, such as Acre, Byblos and Tartus, and the more inland Damascus and Aleppo. While there are cities of historical importance in the non-coastal Levant as well, including Palmyra and Petra, they are more the exceptions than the rule, and faded with the growth of maritime trade–even today, the non-coastal Levant is populated in significant part by nomadic Bedouin, herding sheep (see post of 4.15).

That it is largely desert/non-coastal gives Jordan a unique character among the countries of the Levant. Jordan has a desert/bedouin identity, a very much “Arab” identity not made murky by the history of the coastal Levant (see post of 4.25). Rather than being associated with great Mediterranean empires, contact with the West and the luxuries of Silk Road trade, Jordan far more sees itself as a creature of the desert, a country that looks eastward to Arabia rather than westward. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is almost always portrayed in a western suit or military uniform. King Abdullah of Jordan is seen in posters just as often in Arab jelabiyyah and keffiyeh. Jordanian currency? “Dinars” (as in other Arab countries) rather than the “pounds” used in Syria and Lebanon. The Jordanian monarchy traces its roots to Mohammed and the WWI Arab Revolt, and to the familial and loyalty bonds of the Arab bedouin. In Jordan, bedouin culture is to some extent placed on a pedestal as national heritage, while one Syrian man from coastal Lattakia told us (contrary to fact) that Syria had “only a few bedouin families” (perhaps somehow embarrassed of their existence and preferring to think of Syria as a country of ancient and sophisticated cities and not desert nomads). Another Syrian man questioned Syrians’ “Arabness” altogether, saying that despite the name of the country–Syrian Arab Republic–Syrians weren’t Arab at all but a mixture of many races (see post of 4.25).

Modern Jordan is in part a creation of the British, and Jordanian King Abdullah’s mother is British–there is no doubt that it is today one of the most “western-friendly” of the Arab countries. But it is with this frame of mind, that Jordan is just as much a country of the Arabian desert as it is a country of the Levant, that I wished to preface some portraits from Jordan.

Bedouin boy, Wadi Rum

Among the most interesting bedouin populations of Jordan that travelers are likely to run into are the Bdul of Petra. The Bdul are the most recent “residents” of Petra, having moved into the rock-cut tombs and facades in the last few hundred years. Historically, the Bdul have been the most down-trodden of the Bedouin groups of Jordan, among the poorest and most looked down on. Most recently, in an effort to further the preservation of the World Heritage Site, the Jordanian government has evacuated the Bdul from the Petra ruins, placing them into a town settlement nearby and reportedly offering modern conveniences, health care and education. But many continue to live in rock-cut caves just outside of the central ruins and others commute in to conduct business with the tourists. In a “power sharing” agreement set up by the government, businesses and horses/carriages “up to” the Treasury (just short of Petra “city center”) are operated by “outside” Jordanians (and Egyptians) authorized by the government, while those “past” the Treasury are run by the Bdul. (See post of 10.9 on Petra.) The Bdul who work in Petra are among tourists’ greatest resources, offering friendly chatter in multiple languages, directions and tea almost everywhere you turn, either gratuitously or in exchange for a quick look at their merchandise. Careful though, or you’ll end up being dragged into a confusing sort of air arm wrestling, as happened with us on more than a few occasions.

Elderly Bdul woman and daughter, both souvenir vendors (and damned compelling ones), Petra

Bdul boy in front of the Treasury, Petra

Amman (then known as Philadelphia) was one of a string of Roman cities located in now western Jordan, but presents relatively little in terms of Roman ruins, far less than the ruins of Jerash to the north or cities in now Syria. That said, Amman is today a fairly dynamic capital, with ample investment coming in from both the West and the Gulf, and a steady flow of expats and tourists.

Some residents of Amman

Modern Amman was actually founded by Circassians, Muslims from the Caucasus who moved into the Ottoman Empire who now constitute a significant ethnic minority in Jordan. The “suburb” of Wadi as-Seer near Amman remains a center of Circassian Jordan.

Circassian brother and sister in headscarf and karate gi.

Egypt faces photo religion

Faces of Egypt

Egypt is an Arab country, and indeed the Arab conquest came quickly to Egypt given its geographical proximity to the Arabian Peninsula. Nonetheless, Egypt represents a far more ancient culture, and Egyptian Arab identity, to me, seems a particularly distinct one compared to the Arab cultures of the Gulf or even the Levant, both areas in which the modern nation states do not seem to represent a distinct/discrete ethnic identity or culture.

Other than the Nubians originally from southern Egypt and perhaps the Bedouin in the Sinai, we did not encounter significant ethnic minorities, although perhaps it could be said that the Copts represent an Egyptian line with less Arab genetic input. Some pictures:

Vendor, Alexandria. In Alexandria we noticed that many Egyptians seem to have green eyes; it seemed less common in other parts of Egypt.

Scholar, Al Azhar Mosque. This man, to me, seemed somewhat “un-Egyptian” in appearance–he said that his family was from the Delta region.

Perhaps part of this is due to Ramadan, but Egypt feels far more religious than most of the other Islamic countries we have traveled to. The calls to prayer seem louder and more urgent and public worship far more common and conspicuous. Most shockingly (though perhaps that is too strong a word), there is an astonishing number of men who walk around with zebibas (“raisins”), which are forehead prayer bumps from repeated prostration during prayer. While some Egyptian men seem to wear these marks proudly as a testament to how devout they are, it is generally believed that they are intentionally inflicted (perhaps by scraping one’s head on the carpet in an exaggerated manner while praying), rather than a necessary consequence of frequent prayer–little else could explain the absence of such marks on the foreheads of the devout in other Islamic countries.