Emails from the Edge (43 page)

MASS SACRIFICE (Iran): A few of the tombs in this most personal of graveyards at Golestan-e Shohada, the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, on the outskirts of Isfahan, where 100,000 dead from the eight-year war between Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq lie buried.

DESERT NORM (Jordan): On a 24-hour bivouac made tolerable only by fasting, the author camps outside a Bedouin tent at Wadi Rum, where the older generation remembers Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia without ever having been to a cinema.

TERRORIST OR FREEDOM FIGHTER? (Syria): Kurdish activist and member of the PKK, regarded by Turkey and the US as a terrorist organisation, Abdul Latif Hussein Younis Ali stands defiantly against the backdrop of Turkish terrain, not much more than a kilometre from the border town of Qamishle.

HAVE AGENCY, WILL TRAVEL (Lebanon): Having spent the past half-century making other people's holidays more enjoyable, people like the gentleman standing beside him here—a satisfied customer for 35 years—Afif Abdul Malik makes his own getaway to the South of France every August.

KINDNESS OF STRANGERS (Turkey): Turks from the Asian side of Istanbul turn the task of mounting the steps of the city's famous Galata Tower from one that looked impossible into the merely difficult. (Photo credit: Emilie Binnerts)

ABANDON HOPE: (Poland) All who pass through the chilling entrance to Auschwitz under the cruellest slogan imaginable: ARBEIT MACHT FREI (‘WORK MAKES YOU FREE').

OLD TIMERS' SAKE (Latvia): Two men of a certain age face daily life in the post-communist world with a certain resignation. Seated on a bench in the provincial town of Kuldiga, they could, on the other hand, have been rehearsing
Waiting for Godot
.

RIGHT ON QUEUE (Estonia): Waiting in sub-zero Tallinn for to top up her financial reserves, fellow journalist and friend Stephanie Bunbury, snug as a bug in her bunny rug, makes the most of her Baltic break.

TURNING POINT (Finland): At 69°N, 25° E, just north of Inari, Finland —and thus unarguably above the Arctic Circle — the author gazes up the road to the point where it veers off towards Norway, and feels his journey complete.