the fleeting un-photographed moments

 

I want to describe a few of the many fascinating, thrilling, delightful and touching moments we have encountered that couldn’t be photographed, for one reason or another. 

Why couldn’t they be photographed?

Sometimes it would have been indecent, like going to the women’s hammam (Turkish bath) in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, where I sat around in a steamy room with a bunch of other women in their skivvies, poured scalding hot water on myself and got scrubbed down by a vigorous bathhouse lady.  I thought I was exfoliating before this, but nothing I’ve had ever done before even came close!  Jack missed out on this.  I was lucky to be able to go with a friend of a friend because going alone would have been intimidating.

Sometimes it happened too fast, like the attempted purse snatching that happened right under our noses, just as the doors were closing on the train in Carthage, Tunisia.  The woman (a middle aged white tourist) held on tight and the thief jumped off the train at the last moment, sans sac.  The whole train car gasped and looked scandalized and then an older Tunisian man gave what seemed to be a lecture to the car at large.  I wish I could have understood what he said.

Sometimes we were afraid our camera would be stolen or would attract even more attention, like at many of the numerous markets we’ve been to.  Most of the medinas in Morocco were like this, including the snake pit that is the center of Marrakech.  Our wwoof hosts in Morocco also took us to a few local souks where we appeared to be the only foreigners.  I would include in this the Israeli soldiers (presumably!) who walk around in plain clothes, holding hands with their girlfriend or boyfriend, with an enormous gun slung over their shoulder.  Israel felt like the place we were least likely to have our camera stolen, but I still didn’t have the nerve to take pictures like this.  Maybe it was the ENORMOUS gun.

Sometimes they were in the dark, like the long walk back to our wwoof farm in Umbria with our British friend, where we were on a dirt road in the dark and the stars came out in force because there was no light pollution to contend with.

Often it would have been too impolite, like all the pictures of people and clothing that I wish I could have taken.  We’ve seen so many ways to wear a headscarf.  Arab Muslims and Berber Muslims and Malaysian Muslims and high fashion Muslims, devout Jewish women awkward touristas all have different styles.  Morocco was full of these handmade, brightly-colored, pointy-toed, leather shoes that don’t actually seem to fit on anyone’s feet.

Sometimes it wasn’t visual, like the tradition of applauding airline pilots for a smooth landing (on Iceland Air), or the sound of the tide rushing in to the bay around Mont Saint Michel, or the sound of competing calls-to-prayer ringing from the walls in Istanbul or echoing around the hills of Amman.  This also includes smells like the aroma of wild herbs we weed-whacked in preparation for olive picking or the constant smell of pee in French (non-residential) toilets, no matter how clean they sometimes appeared to be.  And then there’s the flavors like the white truffle sauce in Italy, the lamb in Tunisia and the mysteriously-impossible-to-find-again lemon cake in Morocco.

Often it required a better camera or a better photographer, like the panoramic views and consistent beauty of Petra and Tuscany.  This also includes the five-minute old goat kid we saw trying to stand up in Petra and the Moroccan peacocks who were totally unable to see the yummy frog holding perfectly still among the grains of corn they were devouring.

 

Fortunately, despite all my whining, we’ve caught a lot of good ones.