Henry Hemming - Misadventure in the Middle East: Travels as a Tramp, Artist and Spy

Advance praise for

Misadventure in the Middle East

A once-in-a-lifetime journey, full of youthful ebullience and idealism, but self-aware too, and brave.

Colin Thubron, author of Behind the Wall and The Lost Heart of Asia

A fantastic journey, full of surprising incidents and exciting encounters, in which you never know where the travellers will end up next. High-spirited and often amusing, Hemmings book also grapples with some of the big issues in the Middle East today.

Nicholas Jubber, author of The Prester Quest and winner of the Dolman Best First Travel Book Award

Misadventure in the Middle East is more than a gripping story of a dangerous expedition. It is a journey of selfdiscovery and an exploration of what it is to be an artist in a fractured world.

John Mole, author of Its All Greek To Me! and Mind Your Manners

For Dad and Tom Fenwick, who in different ways made me want to do this

Travels as Tramp, Artist and Spy

Henry Hemming

First published by
Nicholas Brealey Publishing in 2007

www.nicholasbrealey.com
www.henryhemming.com

Henry Hemming 2007
The right of Henry Hemming to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.

eISBN: 978-1-47364-481-6

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hemming, Henry, 1979

Misadventure in the Middle East : travels as tramp, artist and spy/
Henry Hemming.

p. cm.

1. Hemming, Henry, 1979TravelMiddle East. 2. ArtistsEngland Biography. 3. Middle EastDescription and travel. I. Title. N6797.H3855A2 2007
915.60454dc22

2006024120

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording and/or otherwise
without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may
not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in
any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published,
without the prior consent of the publishers.

Printed in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc.

PART ONE: GO EAST
From the CzechSlovak border through Turkey to Iran

PART TWO: DANCING AT DEATH
From Iran into Kurdish Iraq and back into Iran, illegally

PART THREE: BEAT OF THE DRUM
From Oman to Jordan, via Saudi Arabia, as the second Gulf War gets underway

PART FOUR: ARABIAN SUMMER
From Amman via Damascus and Aleppo to Beirut, where Yasmine is almost killed

PART FIVE: BAGHDAD AND BEYOND
From Amman to Baghdad, Jerusalem and home

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche [] would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholars gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him.

Carl Jung (18751961)

From the CzechSlovak border through Turkey to Iran

THE GUARDS ON THE SLOVAK SIDE OF THE CROSSING HAD had their heads shaved earlier that week. The first one to see us said Problem and radioed through to his superiors before ushering Yasmine out of the flow of traffic into a no-mans land bordered by thick yellow lines. He spoke some more into his radio, his voice hushed and a little tense. He sounded like a racing commentator. With the border crossing so small he didnt really need to talk into a radio, he could have just turned around and shouted at the other guards in the guardhouse, but, as he knew, talking into the radio looked good. It reminded the watching world that he was in charge. He slotted the radio back into its holster and with a series of nods and sudden hand gestures motioned us out of Yasmine, the second-hand Toyota pick-up truck I had bought with Al a few months ago.

Al was also clambering out of Yasmine at that moment, the person with whom I had left London nine days before; the other part of what had just begun.

Two more Slovak officials came over to have a look at us, hands on chins, foreheads crumpled. The shortest one stepped forward. He had a snub nose and wore a hat one size too big.

Passport.

I handed my passport over and stepped back, trying to look apologetic and unthreatening, but at the same time not entirely sure why we had been pulled out of the flow of Trabants and Ladas heading into Slovakia. The three guards looked me up and down, clumsily, none of them seeming to like what they saw, before turning to Al. He didnt mind being looked up and down so much and their eyes remained on him as he pottered back and forth within our miniature no-mans land, whistling to himself, kicking at small stones and hopping to the tune in his head.

The guard going through my passport found a page that he liked the look of. The other two crowded round.

Problem, he said once more, looking up at me and then back at the passport, shaking his head slowly, making sure to give each shake an exaggerated, pantomime follow-through.

The guard held up my passport and pointed at the Iranian visa stamp I had obtained two weeks ago, just before leaving London. He shook his head once more to really ram the point home, before marching back to the guardhouse. There was an ominous spring to his step: it was as if he had just found an important clue, or proof of something. The other two guards told us to get back into Yasmine and directed us to another no-mans land. Although more spacious than the last you could really stretch your legs in this one our new holding area was farther away from the flow of traffic entering and exiting Slovakia, and farther away from Slovakia itself, the country we hoped to cross in order to get to Istanbul, our first stop.

AL AND I WERE NINE DAYS INTO WHAT WE HAD SPENT THE last few months telling anyone who had asked or anyone who would listen was going to be a year-long journey into the Middle East. We were painters; or you could say we were artists, but theres something about the word artist that feels a bit exclusive, or makes you think of people with a language all of their own one that non-artists wouldnt get and besides, most of the time we made paintings. So we were painters.

Between us we knew very little about the Middle East. Or the heart of the Islamic world, as we had begun to call it because we thought this might make it easier to raise money for our journey. Heart of the Islamic world sounded more epic than Middle East, and less like something youd hear about on the nightly news. So why go to the Middle East? We would be asked this almost everywhere we went, the questioner smiling as if whatever followed was going to be a little perverse.