I’m having to radically revise my archive/gallery schema now that I’m living in Jerusalem for the next three years. I used to just organize photos by trip or event: Jordan, Syria, Norway, Immigration Rally, Peace Protest, etc. But now that I’ll be in one place for a while, taking my camera almost everywhere,  it doesn’t make sense to make one big gallery for Palestine/Israel, or to have many tiny galleries for the “events” of every other day. So while I figure that out, here are some recent street shots I’ve taken as I get warmed up….

Jaffa Street, West Jerusalem

Separation barrier, Bethlehem, West Bank.

Ka’ak vendor, Old City of Jerusalem

Bus stop, East Jerusalem

Olive branches and separation barrier, Bethlehem, West Bank.

Here’s one of those posts I wish someone else had written before our trip to the Middle East last spring. I had to figure this all out myself. So, you’re traveling to Israel as well as several neighboring Arab countries who don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. Turns out, these countries have chosen to take out their ideological differences on hapless travelers by barring entry to folks who have Israeli markings in their passports.

The solution used to be that you could request that Israeli border officials stamp a visa on a piece of paper kept in your passport until you exit Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. When we checked official web sites before our trip earlier this year which said that they still do this. But friends who live and travel in the region said they are not consistent in responding to such requests, and will sometimes not stamp your passport at all–which is OK for travel within Israel proper. But if you plan to pass back and forth between Israel and Occupied Palestine–which means passing through Israeli military checkpoints–not having a stamp can be a problem.

So, bottom line, you need two passports: one for Israel to stamp, and one for traveling to Arab countries, such as Syria or Lebanon. Syria will even look to see stamps from neighboring Arab countries like Jordan, so don’t hand them a blank passport just for them as if you dropped out of the sky with a new passport–they’ll know why–and want to see your Jordanian entry stamp, for example. Israel doesn’t seem to mind getting an unused passport, even if you’re crossing the Jordanian border and don’t have Jordanian stamps.

Try Googling “second passport” and you’ll get lots of broker services that want to charge add-on fees for facilitating and expediting the process. But for you DIY types who want to make a direct application to the State Department, instructions are hard to come by.

There is no application for a second passport, per se, but buried on page 3 of a State Department PDF, under the heading, “U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 7 – Consular Affairs,” are these relatively simple steps:

1. Fill out a regular passport renewal application
2. Include a signed letter saying why you need the second passport, which for some reason needs to include your promise that if you lose it you’ll report it to the nearest embassy. They give an example of such a statement.
3. Include your current passport, but plaster it with post-it notes saying something like “APPLICATION FOR SECOND PASSPORT, DO NOT DESTROY, PLEASE RETURN”
4. Two passport photos
5. Your fee, currently $75 if you already have a passport.
6. The State Dept. recommends you use a traceable delivery method such as UPS. I do not recommend FedEx.

That’s pretty much it. Give them at least four weeks to process it, though you can pay extra for expedited applications. Here’s the official U.S. passport site, which has other info and details you may need. Also, don’t panic when your second passport arrives without your original. The original is returned separately.

And with my Syria photos posted, I think that makes the last of my Middle East sabbatical galleries to go online. Our time in Syria was especially unique because we weren’t there to document development projects, but more to do “contexting” as our friends at Questscope say—learning about regional culture and history, with a particular focus on the legacy of Christianity in the region. This included everything from Christian communities dating back to the time of the apostles that still speak Aramaic, to crusader castles, to the multiplicity of Arab Christian churches in Syria and beyond.

By far the most significant experience of this trip was our overnight stay at the Mar Musa monastery—on the top of a desert mountain. It’s both an ancient Christian monastery but also a living, vibrant, spiritual community where today many young Syrians and international pilgrims come to retreat and fellowship. Here’s a photo showing the winding hike up, and a few other highlights from our Syrian sojourn:

Mar Musa monastery

Krak de Chevalier, crusader castle

Desert road sign

Prayer at the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus

Courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque.

Spice shopping at the Damascus Souq.

Happy camel

+ See the rest of the gallery

I’m tempted to put “FINALLY!” in the title, since my sabbatical was more than a month ago, but as I’ve prefaced each of my other recent gallery postings—I had to work through all of my Questscope and MCC images first. So here’s a link to  the gallery of images from Jordan that do not include Questscope projects, including quite a few from Petra. My favorites—which for some reason are all vertical:

Red Sea beach at Aqaba.

The Siq at Petra

The Treasury at Petra

Kite flying in Amman

Pigeons over Amman skyline at dusk

Steeple and Minaret, Cross and Crescent, Amman

+See the rest of the gallery

Since returning from my sabbatical in the Middle East in June, I’ve been following events in Iran with great interest. The elections took place there about a week before the end of my trip, and though I didn’t have any direct connection to Iran while in the region–other than conversations with a friend who had recently visited Tehran and relayed the anti-Ahmadinejad sentiment that he heard on the streets there–I’ve mostly just been moved in inspired by the courage of ordinary citizens to take on such a repressive regime. So I’ve tried to do my part by showing up to local events here in DC, and blogging about it for Sojourners.

Here’s a link to the gallery, which I plan to update with more photos soon.