The Best American Travel Writing 2011

Chapter 3

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No wonder they call this the Forbidden Country. It"s the most bewitching, bewildering, beheading vacation spot you"ll never vacation in.

h.e.l.lo-Good-Bye!

Saudi Arabia is one of the premier pilgrimage sites in the world, outstripping Jerusalem, the Vatican, Angkor Wat, and every other religious destination, except for India"s k.u.mbh Mela (which attracts as many as 50 million pilgrims every three years). Millions of Muslims flock to Mecca and Medina annually. But, for non-Muslims, it"s another story. Saudi Arabia has long kept not just its women but its very self behind a veil. Robert Lacey, the Jidda-based author of The Kingdom and Inside the Kingdom, explains that only when revenues from the hajj pilgrims fell drastically, during the Depression, did the Saudis allow infidel American engineers to enter the country and start exploring for oil.

Before 9/11, Saudi Arabia was in fact gearing up to welcome, or at least accept, a trickle of non-Muslim visitors, dropping a handkerchief to the world. Crown Prince Abdullah-now the king-was a radical modernizer by Saudi standards. He wanted to encourage more outside contact and to project an image other than one of religious austerity (with bursts of terrorism). The Saudis had already cracked open the door slightly for some degree of cultural tourism. Leslie McLoughlin, a fellow at the University of Exeter"s Inst.i.tute of Arab and Islamic Studies, led tours to the Kingdom in 2000 and 2001, and both groups included affluent and curious Jewish men and women from New York. But on 9/11 the pa.s.sageway narrowed again as Saudi Arabia and the United States confronted the reality that Osama bin Laden and fifteen of the nineteen terrorist hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The news cut to the very character of the Saudi state. Back in 1744, the oasis-dwelling al-Saud clan had made a pact with Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi sect, which took an especially strict approach to religious observance. The warrior al-Sauds got religious legitimacy; the anhedonic Wahhabis got protection. To this day the Koran is the const.i.tution of Saudi Arabia, and Wahhabism its dominant faith. The royals doubled down on the deal when Islamic fundamentalists took over the Grand Mosque, in Mecca, in 1979. Now, with bin Laden"s attacks, the bargain the royals struck with the fundamentalists-allowing anti-Western clerics and madra.s.sas to flourish and not cracking down on those who bankroll al-Qaeda and terrorism-had borne its poison fruit.

Three years after 9/11, in 2004, the Kingdom decided to give the tourism business another try, this time hiring a public relations firm to get things rolling. The website of the resulting Supreme Commission for Tourism was "a disaster," one Saudi official abashedly recalls, shaking his head. The site noted that visas would not be issued to an Israeli pa.s.sport holder, to anyone with an Israeli stamp on a pa.s.sport, or, just in case things weren"t perfectly clear, to "Jewish people." There were also "important instructions" for any woman coming to the Kingdom on her own, advising that she would need a husband or a male sponsor to pick her up at the airport, and that she would not be allowed to drive a car unless "accompanied by her husband, a male relative, or a driver." Needless to say, there would be no drinking allowed-Saudi officials even try to enforce no-drinking rules on private jets in Saudi airs.p.a.ce, sometimes sealing the liquor cabinets. Finally, belying the fact that Arabs consider hospitality a sacred duty, there was the no-loitering kicker: "All visitors to the Kingdom must have a return ticket." After New York congressman Anthony Weiner kicked up a fuss, the anti-Semitic language on the website was removed.

Now, six years later, the Saudis are trying yet again. But they aren"t opening their arms unless (with a few exceptions) you are part of a special tourist group. "No backpacking stuff," says Prince Sultan bin Salman, the tall and chatty former astronaut who is the president and chairman of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities. "You know, high level," he goes on, and involving only "fully educated" groups.

You still have to accept all the restrictive rules. And it won"t be easy getting in. Visas these days for Westerners are so scarce that even top American diplomats have a hard time obtaining them for family members. The Kingdom recoils at the thought of the culture clash that could be caused by an invasion of French girls in shorts and American boys with joints. A sign at the airport warns: DRUG TRAFFICKERS WILL BE PUT TO DEATH.

Saudis fret that the rest of the world sees them as aliens, even though many are exceptionally charming and welcoming once you actually breach the wall. They are sensitive about being judged for their Flintstones ways, and are quick to remind you of what happened to the shah of Iran when he tried to modernize too fast. Not to mention their own King Faisal, who was a.s.sa.s.sinated in 1975 (regicide by nephew) after he introduced television and public education for girls. This prince-and-pauper society has always had a Ja.n.u.s face. Royals fly to the South of France to drink, gamble, and sleep with Russian hookers, while reactionary clerics at home delegitimize women and demonize Westerners. Last winter, a Saudi prince found himself under arrest for allegedly strangling his servant in a London hotel. (He has pleaded not guilty.) The Kingdom didn"t have widespread electricity until the 1950s. It didn"t abolish slavery until the 1960s. Restrictions on mingling between unrelated members of the opposite s.e.x remain severe. (Recently, a Saudi cleric advised men who come in regular contact with unrelated women to consider drinking their breast milk, thereby making them in a sense "relatives," and allowing everyone to breathe a sigh of relief.) Today, Saudi Arabia is trying to take a few more steps ahead-starting a coed university, letting women sell lingerie to women, even toning down the public beheadings. If you"re living on Saudi time, akin to a snail on Ambien, the popular eighty-six-year-old King Abdullah is making bold advances. To the rest of the world, the changes are almost imperceptible.

"Lots of Attentions"

The idea of seeing Saudi Arabia with the welcome mat out was irresistible-even when the wary Saudis kept resisting. I made plans for a Saudi vacation, knowing that the only thing more invigorating than ten days in Saudi Arabia would be ten days there as a woman. Actually, it would be two women: joining me was my intrepid colleague and trip photographer Ashley Parker. I was a little squeamish about boarding a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight with a cross on my forehead. (It was Ash Wednesday.) Some Saudi flights embark with an Arabic supplication, in the words of the Prophet Muhammad. The flight attendants-who are not Saudi, because it would be dishonorable for the airline to employ Saudi women-bring around baskets of Saudi newspapers. A glance at the headlines underscored the fact that we were in a time machine hurtling backward. One article in the English-language Arab News was t.i.tled "Carrying Dagger a Mark of Manliness." Another warned, "Women lawyers are not welcome in the Kingdom"s courts." It was startling to see a thumbnail portrait of a female columnist-my counterpart-in which only her eyes were not concealed by a veil. Reading the airline magazine is like the moment in The Twilight Tone when you sense there"s something slightly off about that picture-book town. The magazine is called Ahlah Wasahldn, meaning "h.e.l.lo and Welcome," but the welcome seems to be to Versailles, Provence, and Belize. There"s no hint that Saudi Arabia itself might be a destination.

The in-flight movies offer a taste of things to come. If you order The Proposal, you get a blurry blob over Sandra Bullock"s modest decolletage, and even her clavicles, and the male stripper scene and the erection joke have vanished altogether. A curtained part.i.tion goes up so that Saudi women can nap without their abayas. There"s no alcohol onboard, although some veteran business travelers en route to the Kingdom order vodkas at the airport bar and pour them into a water bottle for sustenance along the way. At the airport in Riyadh, the gender segregation ratchets up. There"s a Ladies" Waiting Room and a Ladies" Prayer Room. If there hadn"t been a Saudi majordomo to come and collect us, we would have been in limbo-a pair of single women wandering the airport with no man to get them out, trapped forever like Tom Hanks in The Terminal.

In America, you get chocolates in your hotel room. In Riyadh, you might get a gift bag from your hosts in the Kingdom with something to slip into for dinner-a long black abaya and a black headscarf that make you look like a mummy and feel like a pizza oven. And even then they"ll stick you behind a screen or curtain in the "family" section of the restaurant. The big Gloria Steinem advance in recent years is that women now wear abayas with dazzling designs on the back (sometimes with thousands of dollars" worth of Swarovski crystals) or Burberry or zebra-patterned trim on the sleeves.

I respect Islam"s mandate for modest clothing. But I don"t see why I have to adopt a dress code, as Aaron Sorkin put it on The West Wing, that makes "a Maryknoll nun look like Malibu Barbie." Needless to say, Barbie herself was banned in Saudi Arabia, though I did see Barbie paraphernalia for sale in a Riyadh supermarket and a Barbie-like doll, accessorized with headscarf and abaya (and of course not in a box with Ken), in the National Museum gift shop. As for h.e.l.lo! magazine, a recent import to the Kingdom, Saudi censors paste small white squares of paper on the models" glossy thighs.

Soon after our arrival I asked Prince Sultan bin Salman, the tourism minister, about the dress code for foreigners. "Well, the abaya is part of the uniform," he said. "It"s part of enjoying the culture. I"ve seen people who go to India dress up in the Indian sari." Najla Al-Khalifah, a member of the prince"s staff in the female section of the tourist bureau, offered another a.n.a.logy: "You can"t wear shorts for the opera. You must dress for the occasion. If you don"t like it, don"t go." Fair enough, but if you do wear shorts to the opera, you won"t get arrested by the roving outriders of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice-that is, the mutawa, or religious police.

Being in purdah p.r.i.c.ks more deeply when you"re dealing with American-owned enterprises-it"s as if your own people are in s.e.xist cahoots with your captors. In 2008, covering President Bush"s trip to the Middle East, I was standing next to ABC"s Martha Raddatz at the desk at the Riyadh Marriott when she angrily pressed the clerk about getting into the gym. He gave her The Smile. How about never, lady? On this trip, at Budget Rent a Car, the man at the counter explained to me that women could rent cars only if they paid extra for a driver. (And, to boot, it would be dishonorable for a woman to sit in the pa.s.senger seat unless a male relative were driving.) When I said I could drive myself, the man"s head fell back in helpless laughter. I enlisted Nicolla Hewitt, a gorgeous, statuesque blonde New Yorker on business in Saudi Arabia, to join me in a brief sit-in at the men"s section of Starbucks in the upscale Kingdom Centre mall. Her head was swirling with lurid news accounts of a Western woman who had been dragged from a Starbucks for committing the crime of attempted equality. "If I see the b.l.o.o.d.y mutawa," she said, gripping her latte nervously, "I"m hoofing it."

At various establishments I began amusing myself by seeing how long it took for male Cerberuses to dart forward and block the way to the front sections reserved for men. At McDonald"s, dourly observing my arrival, a janitor barred the door with a broom in two seconds flat. At the posh Al Faisaliah Hotel, in Riyadh, I was asking the maitre d" why I couldn"t sit with the businessmen when he suddenly caught sight of an elegant woman sashaying through the men"s section. He made a Reggie Bush run to knock her out of bounds before turning back to thwart my own entrance with a Baryshnikov leap. I did manage a moment of Pyrrhic triumph in the deserted men"s section in the lobby cafe of the Jidda Hilton, ordering a cappuccino, but then the waiter informed me that he couldn"t serve it until I moved five feet back to the women"s section.

Hotel desk clerks would warn me to put on my abaya merely to walk across the lobby, even when I was wearing my most modest floor-length navy dress, the one reserved for family funerals. "You will get lots of attentions-not good attentions," one clerk said. Not wearing an abaya can be hazardous-but so can wearing one. Signs on the mall escalators caution women to be careful not to get their cloaks caught in the moving stairs. (A Muslim woman was recently choked to death by her hijab while on holiday in Australia; it had gotten caught in a go-cart at high speed.) You soon become paranoid, worrying that if you open the door for room service wearing a terry-cloth robe, you"ll end up in the stocks. But the top hotels are staffed by foreign men-something I realized must be the case when my butler at the Al Faisaliah folded my underwear unprompted. If I were b.u.t.tled by a Saudi, we"d probably be shuttled to Deera Square-or Chop Chop Square, as it"s better known-where the public beheadings occur. It"s the one with the big drain, which the Saudis claim is for rain.

Sunny Side of Repression The first time I traveled to Saudi Arabia was in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, had invited me to come over and see for myself that not all Saudis are terrorists. On that trip, I was more heedless and cavalier. I wore a hot-pink skirt, with fringe, to go to an interview with the Saudi education minister. When I came down from my hotel room, the men in the lobby glared with such hostility that I thought they"d pelt me to death with their dates. My minder turned me back to the elevator. "Go get your abaya!" he yelled. "They"ll kill you!" (My Guardian Knew What Was Best for Me.) This was right around the time when fifteen Saudi schoolgirls had died in a fire because the mutawa wouldn"t let them escape without their headscarves and abayas, a horrifying episode that shook the Kingdom. Confronted by carloads of screaming men whenever I wore my own clothes, I added more layers but still got into trouble. I was swathed in black with a headscarf at a mall next to the Al Faisaliah Hotel when four members of the mutawa bore down. They barked in Arabic that they could see my neck and the outline of my body, and they confiscated my pa.s.sport. All this was happening against the backdrop of a storefront underwear display featuring a lacy red teddy. My companion, the suave Adel al-Jubeir, an adviser to King Abdullah and now the Saudi amba.s.sador to Washington, managed to retrieve the pa.s.sport and obtain permission for me to leave the mall (and the country), but it took a disconcertingly long time.

With each incident, you feel more cowed and less eager to defy the dress-to-repress rules. For this trip, I had an abaya made so I wouldn"t have to swelter inside the standard polyester ones in the baking heat. I didn"t go for anything as gauzy as Dorothy Lamour"s in The Road to Morocco. I wanted simple black linen. But the tailor tried too hard to give it a flattering shape, adding slits so high they could get my throat slit. When I wore it, my minders pestered me to put an abaya over my abaya. It reminded me of Martin Short"s mischievous question about Hillary Clinton"s nightwear: "Does she have a pantsuit on under her pantsuit?"

Still, this time around, I decided to look on the sunny side of repression. Feel guilty about not jogging? Don"t even try! Tired of running off to every new exhibition? Lucky you-there aren"t any art museums! Can"t decide which sybaritic treatment to select at the hotel spa? Relax-the spa"s just for men. And you never have to stress about a bad-hair day.

The two words you"ll quickly learn are haled (permissible) and haram (forbidden)-the kosher and nonkosher of the Arab world. Since your old pastimes are now mostly haram, you"ll have to pick up some new vices. Gorge on gamy camel bacon at Friday brunch. (Friday is the Muslim Sunday.) Develop a new obsession with tweezing and threading your eyebrows and blackening your Bedouin bedroom eyes-now literally the windows to the soul. Enjoy a country that is the last refuge of indoor smoking. I went to the cigar bar at the fancy Globe restaurant in Riyadh and enjoyed a "Churchill"s Cabinet" stogie for 180 riyals ($50), with its "lovely notes of leather and cream, hints of coffee, citrus, and spice." To go along with beluga caviar and Maine-lobster snacks there was an elaborate wine presentation, with the waiter showing off the label of a nonalcoholic Zinfandel before nestling it in a silver ice bucket. "It"s from California," he said proudly. I fell into tippling in the morning, starting the day with Saudi champagne, a saccharine apple juice concoction.

You might also want to emulate the spoiled Saudi set and just loll about until the sun sets, watching The Bold and the Beautiful or Glenn Beck on satellite TV. (There are no public movie theaters.) The Saudis have a homegrown version of the Today show in English, with their own Meredith Vieira in headscarf, promoting b.u.t.tocks exercises and colon cleansing, and a hefty Martha Stewart doppelganger in a babushka, baking dried-apricot sandwiches in flower shapes. It"s all very cozy, even if the crawl underneath is crawling with less-than-flattering stories about Israel"s treatment of the Palestinians. One night, deciding to take a risk, I smuggled a young Saudi man up to my hotel room to translate some of the scary-looking rants on TV by guys in thobes and kaffiyehs. Were they trashing the Great Satan? He told me that the serious-looking bearded guy talking a mile a minute was merely chatting about soccer, and another scowling fellow with intense brown eyes was just praying. Likely story.

Once out of your room, you can stroll through the malls with your girlfriends for some Bluetooth flirting, where Rashid and Khalid detect your cell phone network as you walk by and send text messages that range from chatty to creepy. One of my young married minders said he regularly gets ha.s.sled by the mutawa when he"s out flirting with female friends: "They say, "Can I ask who you are with?" and I tell them, "Oh, she"s my sister." And they say, ""Your sister? Do you laugh like that with your sister?"" There"s no date night in Saudi Arabia. The romance strictures here-a few virginal meetings, a peek under the veil, a marriage contract, an all-female wedding reception, and a check of the b.l.o.o.d.y sheets-make The Rules look like the Kama Sutra. In Jidda, there"s a Chinese restaurant called Toki, where unmarried girls can show themselves off in front of likely prospects on a fifty-eight-meter catwalk. The prospects are not young men, however, but their mothers, who traditionally made the match with help from the khatabah, or yenta, who was sometimes sent over to surrept.i.tiously look under the hood and kick the tires of the bride-to-be. She would give the girl a hug to check the firmness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then drop something on the floor to watch the girl pick it up. When the young lady would bend over and her abaya lifted ever so slightly, the khatabah could see her ankles and infer the shape of the legs and derriere.

"The Time of Ignorance"

Back in the 1940s, when the oil began gushing, Saudi Arabia was the sort of place where the country"s first king, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, traveled in a Ford convertible with his falcons and shot gazelles from the car. The king knew the name of every visitor to Riyadh. Travelers could not move around the Kingdom without the king"s express consent, and he personally tracked each one"s odyssey. Some Saudis, who had rarely seen airplanes, a.s.sumed they were cars that simply drove off into the sky. Prince Sultan bin Salman is a natural choice for tourism czar, given that he was the first Muslim in s.p.a.ce. In 1985 he went up as part of an international crew on the Discovery shuttle. Trying to find Mecca from s.p.a.ce-imagine gravity-free kneeling-was nothing compared with persuading other royals (thanks to polygamy, there are now thousands of them) to consider the desirability of making Saudi Arabia tourist-ready. For one thing, Saudis don"t have that fondness for their own history that the British and Italians do. Many pious Muslims look askance at civilizations that predate Islam ("the time of ignorance," as they call it), and they have reservations about archaeological digs that may turn up Christian sites. Archaeology was not fully recognized until the last few years as a field of study in Saudi universities. In other countries, many of the famed tourist sites are what you might call "big broken things"-Machu Picchu, the Colosseum. Saudis don"t go for broken, or even slightly worn. You will never see a Melrose Avenue-style vintage store; it would be considered shameful to buy or sell old clothes. It"s all about the new and shiny.

Prince Sultan was traveling through Tuscany a few years back, snapping pictures of big broken things and talking to preservation experts, when it hit him: maybe there was a way to get Saudis to appreciate their own ancient heritage. He gathered forty or so mayors and governors who liked nothing better than to tear down their cultural heritage, and showed them that they could develop historic sites where local crafts and fresh produce are sold in a "joyous" setting. The cultural education did not begin well. The prince had wanted the officials to see Siena. "And I get a phone call at four A.M. that woke me, and the pilot was calling. He said, "I"m in Vienna."" Eventually, the Saudi mayors and governors began to acquire a taste for old stuff. They"ve done five more trips, and one to Seville was coming up, though maybe they"d end up in Savile Row. (Saudis certainly know the way.) Prince Sultan is now training native Saudis-who have always left the heavy lifting as waiters, maids, and drivers to a servant cla.s.s of Filipinos, Bangladeshis, Indonesians, Pakistanis, and Indians-to work as tour guides, tour operators, and hotel operators. He hopes that Saudis will get better at sightseeing as they travel elsewhere. "Saudis are not trained as good tourists," he told me over tea one night. "They didn"t know how to respect the sites, not throw Kleenex at places."

With Prince Sultan"s a.s.sistance we flew to an attraction we"d never heard of before: the spectacular Madain Saleh, sister city to Jordan"s renowned Petra, three hundred miles to the northwest. After flying across the desert for hours, you suddenly come upon strange and wonderful cla.s.sical structures. Today they"re in the middle of nowhere. Eons ago, at the time of ancient Rome, they stood athwart the Incense Route, controlled by the Nabataean kingdom. An airport is only just being built, so we b.u.mped down in our puddle jumper on what was essentially a cleared track. Our guide barely spoke English, but he was giddy with pleasure at finally having someone to show around. There are more than a hundred sumptuous sandstone tombs here, many of them cavernous, sculpted into solid rock between the first century B.C. and the first century A.D. Only in recent years have the Saudis come to appreciate Madain Saleh"s value, registering it as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008.

They"re also restoring the old train station in Madain Saleh to its former glory, with a shiny black engine from the Hejaz railway, like the one Peter O"Toole blew up in Lawrence of Arabia. Don"t bother asking about T. E. Lawrence here-he"s remembered for selling the Saudis out. (Saudis love the movie, though, and spout lines from it like "Thy mother mated with a scorpion.") The guides in Saudi Arabia have a hard time staying on message, veering wistfully toward memories of time spent in the United States, studying in Palo Alto, San Diego, or Boulder. They still obsess about their college sports teams-staying up until all hours to watch games via satellite. At the Masmak Fortress, in Riyadh-the scene of a critical battle for Abdul Aziz ibn Saud-the guide soon lost interest in leading us among displays labeled "Some Old Guns" and "Cover for the Udder of the She-Camel" and began to wax nostalgic about a married woman named Liz in Grand Rapids.

In Abha, a cool, green, mountainous area to the south, near Yemen, we had our sole encounter with an actual Saudi tourist. He was checking out the Hanging Village, where some people of yore had settled on the side of a sheer cliff to get away from the Ottomans. Supplies were lowered down by rope. The Saudi was a paunchy man from Riyadh named Fahad, who liked to be called Jack. Jack, wearing a stained tracksuit, volunteered that he had once lived in Fort Worth. "I enjoy it," he said, taking a drag on his cigarette and giving Ashley and me an appreciative look, "when I see these girls with the smell of the United States."

Peeping Abdul The charm of Riyadh is that it has no charm. The only visual icon, the one captured in snow globes at souvenir shops, is the city"s tallest building, Kingdom Centre, the home of the Four Seasons Hotel and the Kingdom Centre mall. It is owned by Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, the billionaire nephew of King Abdullah who has been called "the Arabian Warren Buffett" by Time magazine. (Rudy Giuliani turned down a $10 million donation to New York from al-Waleed after 9/11 when al-Waleed suggested that U.S. policies contributed to the attacks.) The skysc.r.a.per features a V-fhaped hole at the top, and Saudis tastelessly joke that it"s "the Hijacker Training Academy."

A Jordanian staffer at the Riyadh Four Seasons complained to me that the only things Saudis do are "shop and eat, shop and eat." Or subject you to "ordeal by tea," as I"ve heard it called. At the ubiquitous malls, women covered in black robes and gloves, with only their eyes showing, shop for La Perla lingerie, Versace gowns, Dior handbags, and Bulgari jewelry. Beauty is a drug for Saudi women, even though they"re stuck at home most of the time-or maybe because of that. Saudi Arabia is more than three times the size of Texas and glitters with three times as many Swarovski crystals. "Bling H2O" water is imported from Tennessee. The shopaholism pauses only at prayer time, when metal grates come down over the stores. Men, who carry more of the burden of the five-times-a-day obligation, head off to the prayer rooms. The women wander zombie-like among the shuttered shop fronts. The atmosphere is watchful. Once, when Ashley tried to snap some pictures of Saudi women shopping at a lingerie store, a female security guard came running up to confiscate the camera. "Just walk away," a Western woman advised us. "She"s a woman-she has no power over you." At last: a fringe benefit of misogyny.

The Kingdom Centre mall has a ladies" floor on top shielded by high, wavy frosted gla.s.s, so that men-with all the maturity of Catholic schoolboys in stairwells-can"t peer up from below. Signs on the ladies" floor tell women, once inside, to take off their head coverings: that way, a Peeping Abdul can"t disguise himself in female garb and wander l.u.s.tfully among them. On the ladies" floor, you"re actually allowed to try on clothes. On floors where the s.e.xes mingle, you often have to buy whatever you want in different sizes and take it all home to try on. The mere thought of a disrobed woman behind a dressing room door is apparently too much for men to handle. There"s something profoundly poignant about seeing little girls running around the malls in normal clothes, playing with little boys in normal ways-you know what"s in store for them in just a few years. When I reached p.u.b.erty, my mother gave me a book called On Becoming a Woman. When these girls reach p.u.b.erty, they"ll have a black tarp thrown over their heads.

In recent years, Riyadh has gotten a dash of sophistication. "Oh, my!" says Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, the lovely Riyadh businesswoman who is a daughter of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former longtime Saudi amba.s.sador to the U.S. "There"s a new restaurant almost every week, and I a.s.sure you, the way they look, the way the food is, is on a par with-I wouldn"t say the top 10 restaurants in New York or London, but definitely 11 to 50." There"s a two-week wait to get a table at B & F Burger Boutique, even though it"s just high-end fast food served in a hip decor. The concrete walls and dim lights evoke SoHo, and gender segregation is more subtle. The women wear abayas with fashionable trim, and the guys trade their white thobes for blue jeans. The religious police showed up on opening night; they wanted the music eliminated and the women screened off by bigger part.i.tions. The restaurant obliged only on the music.

Going from Riyadh to the Red Sea is like going from black-and-white Kansas to Technicolor Oz. The main port of entry for hajj pilgrims, Jidda is Saudi Arabia"s business capital. "The bride of the Red Sea" is home to many female entrepreneurs, and residents say they are trying to tell the rest of the country to relax. Women leave their abayas open in front, or wear nighties or tight jeans underneath. But the enticing blue mosaic pool at the Jidda Hilton is still only for men. I watched a Saudi man swim while a woman in "full ninja," as American businessmen here call it, tiptoed around the edge, chatting with him.

When I asked the concierge about the hotel mosque, he said I couldn"t go in unless I was a Muslim. Later, Prince Saud told me that I could simply have asked the emir of the region for permission. (Like the emir"s listed?) Men in the Kingdom often reflexively say, "No, no, no"-"La, la, la!"-to women because it"s the safer answer. But an essential point about Saudi Arabia is that everything operates on a sliding scale, depending on who you are, whom you know, whom you ask, whom you"re with, and where you are. Drinking is not allowed, but many affluent Saudis keep fully stocked bars. "Take off your abaya when you drink your whiskey," instructed one Saudi mogul as his bartender handed us c.o.c.ktails in his home. Some Saudi men glean the future from coffee grounds, and many Saudi women love horoscopes, but police here s.n.a.t.c.hed a Lebanese TV host and clairvoyant from a pilgrimage and sentenced him to death by beheading for sorcery. (After international media pressure, the execution has for now been postponed.) Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. But Leslie McLoughlin led a tour near Medina prior to 9/11, where he could view the city and the Prophet"s Mosque from his hotel.

Saudi Arabia may now be in semiOpen Sesame mode (and it"s funny to see how many people have named their camels "Barack"), but the holy sites won"t be officially open to non-Muslims anytime soon. On the highway to Mecca, a "Christian bypa.s.s" tells the rest of us when to turn off the road: heathens exit here. Perhaps from a distance you"ll one day be able to glimpse what is expected to be the second-tallest building in the world, now being constructed by the bin Laden family real estate company. It is a hotel complex that will be topped by a clock six times larger than London"s Big Ben. (The Saudis harbor a hope that Mecca Time will dislodge Greenwich Mean Time from its current prominence.) For now, even planes must avoid violating the holy cities, keeping safely away from sacred airs.p.a.ce lest infidels spy from above. There has been talk of building an Islamic, Disneyland-style park on the road between Mecca and Jidda. The Saudis find monkeys and parrots far funnier than mice and ducks, so watch out, Mickey and Daffy. And Qatar recently pushed the Gulf states to create a common Gulf Cooperation Council tourist visa, in order to make the region more attractive to cruise ships.

Jidda has many charms. The median strip on the corniche has a magical open-air museum, with huge, whimsical sculptures by Miro, Henry Moore, and other artists who created works consistent with Islamic values-that is, no representations of the human form. The neon-lit boardwalk is lined with snack shacks, toy shops, and mini amus.e.m.e.nt parks. But it"s missing the s.e.xy, seedy elements that make sh.o.r.e vacations fun. Instead of teenagers necking or kids splashing in the water, there are men spreading out prayer rugs on the seawall.

Libertarian Zone I had bought a Burqini on-line from an Australian company, figuring I"d need one to go swimming. A Burqini-a burka bikini-is a full-body suit that resembles Apolo Ohno"s Olympic outfit or the getup Woody Allen wore to play a sperm in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About s.e.x... But as it turned out I didn"t have to swaddle myself in one, because I discovered a place called Durat al-Arus.

Sarah Bennett, a stunning thirty-two-year-old, blue-eyed California Mormon who converted to Islam and blackened her blond hair, now works in Jidda for a conglomerate. She wears Chanel abayas. Bennett took us to Durat al-Arus, a marina and tourist village where wealthy Saudis and royals have homes and boats. The architecture is 1970s, the colors are Miami Vice, and the mood is downright hedonistic compared with that of the rest of the country. It"s a rare libertarian zone. Women can drive and wear what they want, and men and women can mingle without fear. I quickly commandeered a BMW from a cute sheikh so I could tool around for a few minutes in a meaningless spurt of emanc.i.p.ation. Then the sheikh, who wore a Jack Sparrow bandana and called himself "the Pirate," took Sarah, Ashley, and me out on his yacht, with a motorboat trailing behind, for some snorkeling in the turquoise Red Sea. He was a Muslim and served us only soft drinks as we made our way to a desolate desert island. But other than that you could wear a real bikini and live the high life: listening to club music booming from an iPod, eating melting b.u.t.ter-pecan ice cream and fresh berries, sipping flutes of sparkling pomegranate juice. With a small shock, I was struck by the sensuality of the scene-it was hard to believe this was Saudi Arabia. My thoughts drifted to the silent movie The Sheik, and the moment when Rudolph Valentino drags Agnes Ayres onto his horse in the desert and says, "Lie still, you little fool."

And that, I guess, is why they have the mutawa.

The Last Stand of Free Town.

Porter Fox.

FROM The Believer.

THE CONCENTRIC BOULEVARDS and tidy row houses of downtown Copenhagen instill an overwhelming sense of order in Denmark"s capital city. There are no beggars lurking in alleyways or vendors hawking trinkets on the sidewalk. At night, blaze-orange street cleaners buff cobblestones to a dull sheen while workers blast graffiti off walls with an environmentally friendly jet of pressurized ice crystals. The effect is so striking that on a spring morning with the sun reflecting off the spires of Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen appears more like a fairytale kingdom than the largest metropolis in Scandinavia.

So it was with some surprise that Danes turned on their television sets on May 14, 2007, to see fires burning in their capital"s streets and gangs of police officers beating their countrymen with billy clubs. The worst of the fighting flared up along Prinsessegade Road in the Christianshavn neighborhood. A column of black transport vans filed into the street as residents hurled Molotov c.o.c.ktails, rocks, and fireworks at police. Officers retaliated with batons and tear gas, and by that afternoon, the seventeenth-century streets had disappeared under a thick cloud of smoke.

The site was an ironic flashpoint for violence. Prinsessegade Road marks the northern border of a pacifist commune that has existed in Christianshavn since 1971. That year, a group of squatters overtook an abandoned army base east of Prinsessegade, barricaded the roads, outlawed cars and guns, and created a self-ruling micro-nation in the heart of Copenhagen. They called the eighty-five-acre district Christiania Free Town, drew up a const.i.tution, printed their own currency, banished property ownership, legalized marijuana, and essentially seceded from Denmark. The traditionally liberal Danish government allowed the settlement at first, dubbing Christiania a "social experiment." Then it spent the next three decades trying to reclaim the area. Thirty-nine years and a dozen eviction notices later, the nine hundred residents of Free Town represent one of the longest-lasting social experiments in modern history.

At the turn of the millennium, Denmark, the first country in the world to legalize p.o.r.nography and gay marriage, suffered the same wave of Bush-inspired conservatism that swept through much of Europe. (The Danes sent a submarine to support Operation Iraqi Freedom.) In 2001, the Folketing-Danish Parliament-landed in the hands of a conservative coalition for only the second time in eighty-five years. The coalition (headed by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen) and its austere policies on immigration were viewed by voters as necessary correctives to a lenient program that had led to an overburdened welfare system. On the heels of the controversial Muhammad cartoon incident, Rasmussen"s government gained public support on its promise to put the Dane back in Danish.

The next item on the party"s to-do list-an initiative that had frustrated conservatives for more than three decades-was to eradicate Christiania once and for all. It took just three years to pa.s.s parliamentary law L205 and begin what conservatives called the "normalization" of Free Town. L205 mandated that the Palaces and Properties Agency demolish fifty homes in Christiania, construct four hundred new condominiums, charge market rental rates, and turn management of the district over to a private leasing company. To Christianians, the scheme represented practically everything they"d stood against, and most residents refused to abide. Unlike previous governments, though, Rasmussen"s didn"t back down. It reinforced its efforts with heavy police intervention and a public relations smear campaign-including dramatic sting operations and petty drug busts that yielded few results but made the evening news-that turned many Danes against the once tolerated, even beloved commune.

During the police action in May 2007, the government"s stated objective was to demolish a rundown squatters" shack known as the "Cigarka.s.sen," or "Cigar Box"; by late afternoon, government workers had reduced it to rubble. But at Christiania"s southwest entrance, the insurgency had begun. Pale, waifish Danes wearing hoodies and backpacks darted through Christiania"s alleys and surrounding streets, hurling bottles and rocks at policemen. Near Christiania"s infamous Pusher Street, a television camera caught an officer clubbing a young man in a yellow T-shirt to the ground.

More vans arrived and protesters set barricades of furniture, tires, and cars on fire. Police reinforcements were summoned from all over the city, and the sound of sirens filled the streets. Over the next few days, word spread throughout Europe that Christiania was under attack, and hundreds of supporters from inside and outside the country poured into Copenhagen. As officers dressed in bulky black riot gear flooded Christiania"s gates, the government braced itself for what would be one of the most violent episodes in Copenhagen"s recent history. And residents in Christiania dug in for what appeared to be Free Town"s last stand.

The 1960s were fertile years for micro-nations-the liberalism of the time manifested itself in tiny islands of autonomy. Erwin Strauss"s 1984 book, How to Start Your Own Country, attributes many of the era"s breakaway provinces to the writings of Ayn Rand. In 1969, a group of Rand followers robbed a bar to fund the fict.i.tious nation of Oceana. Oceanians didn"t have an exact site for their country, but boot camps were established to train citizens to defend it. At one point the group even planned to steal a nuclear missile to stave off potential enemies.

Most "ephemeral states"-like American Michael J. Oliver"s "Republic of Minerva," founded in 1972 on a pile of sand Oliver dumped on a pair of reefs north of Tonga-didn"t fare as well as Christiania. (A Tongan chief ran Oliver off.) Neither did "Sealand," created in 1967 by Paddy Roy Bates on a six-thousand-square-foot World War II antiaircraft platform seven miles off the coast of Britain. Bates was ousted by his own "prime minister" in 1978 but won the platform back after a daring helicopter raid.

From its inception, however, Christiania was less the brainchild of a single person than a response to a collective yearning. In 1971, a group of locals broke down the wall to Copenhagen"s abandoned, and increasingly derelict, Bdsmandsstraedes army base. One hundred and fifty squatters followed, making homes in whatever s.p.a.ces they could find. Anarchy buzzed in the streets of Copenhagen. The May 1968 student uprisings in Paris and subsequent Danish student protests in the spring of 1970 had given young artists and students confidence and purpose. A squatter movement cropped up in Copenhagen in response to a growing housing crisis and displeasure with the Danish government. After the invaders took the Bdsmandsstraedes army base, the alternative Copenhagen weekly, Hovedbladet, ran the headline IMMIGRATE WITH BUS NO. 8-THE DIRECT ROUTE TO CHRISTIANIA, and hundreds more arrived at Christiania"s gates.

Police attempted to rout the settlers but were overwhelmed by their numbers. Looking to avoid violent confrontation, Danish officials gave Christianians three years to try their "experiment." But the following year the officials went back on their word and ordered the area cleared. Supporters swarmed the grounds and the police were outnumbered once again. This time the government decided to let Christiania "stay until further notice."

All the while, Christianians expanded the infrastructure of their budding micro-nation. A housing office was established in the Rosenhuset building to process prospective tenants and manage maintenance for the area"s 170 structures. Residents began weekly common meetings to decide community issues like garbage disposal, large-scale construction projects, tenant applications, water, electricity, and government relations. The community"s first rules: no buying, selling, or trading of homes; no violence; no gang affiliations; no guns; no cars. A law prohibiting hard drugs (but not all drugs) was added after a run-in with heroin addicts in the late 1970s.

I"d heard about Christiania while researching "temporary autonomous zones" (or TAZs, as named by anarchist writer Hakim Bey), and flew to Copenhagen in early 2006 to see the community before the bulldozers arrived. Beneath the orange glow of a new condo complex across the street and Denmark"s first snowfall of the year, Christiania appeared more like a village from a Hans Christian Andersen tale than a self-ruling suburb. Small cottages balanced on top of one-room guardhouses; hobbit-esque shacks sported dragon-shaped chimneys. I could see meadows and giant maples and rock-lined pathways.

The area was so expansive it took my Ghanaian taxi driver nine repet.i.tions of the word "Christiania"-accentuated by jabbings of his index finger-to demark the borders of the neighborhood"s northwestern wall. He was excited to be here. He did the things in Free Town that people do in anarchist communes-talk politics, buy hash, and hang with his buddies in the pub long after the bars of Copenhagen had closed. It"s a "good place," he quipped as we approached the northwest gate. Then he glanced across the street at the condo complex and said, "It will soon look like that."

A foot of snow had piled up-a surprise storm for a city surrounded by water-by the time I rendezvoused with my host for the next ten days, an excitable fifty-three-year-old named Emmerik Warburg, who"d discovered Christiania thirty-two years before, as a young artist. He brushed the snow from his jacket and loaded my bag onto his bike, a local Christiania design with two wheels and a cargo box on the front.

Emmerik led me down Christiania"s main drag, the Long Road, past an old officers" barracks that had been transformed into modish, bohemian apartments. He pointed out the "Raisin House," an afterschool children"s center that used solar power and composting toilets. Beyond that was a hole-in-the-wall vegetarian restaurant and, to the right, the terminus of Pusher Street, where dealers once sold hash from elaborately designed stands before the police shut them down in 2004.

We turned right at a carousel-size Buddhist stupa with a string of prayer flags circling it and two burning candles inside, then pa.s.sed through a brick archway that opened into a clutch of interconnected homes. The complex was called Maelkebtten (Dandelion) for the flowers that covered its common meadow in the summer. The whole enclosure, including the apartment I was to stay in for the next week, used to be a grenade factory, Emmerik explained. "Don"t worry," he said. "They"ve all been taken away."

The apartment"s interior was surprisingly clean, with touches of cla.s.sic Danish design. Almost all the building material in Christiania is recycled. The front hall light was fashioned from a paper cylinder wrapped around a low-wattage fluorescent bulb, with a circular CD case fit into the bottom as a dimmer. Another low-wattage bulb over the bed was entombed in a coffee can. The woodstove was also a local design-half a fifty-gallon drum laid on its side with the vent on top. But the gas heater worked best, Emmerik said, as he leapt out the window to turn on the tank.

Things had been a bit tense around the neighborhood, he went on as he scrambled back through the window. There was lots going on. Lots to do. New Year"s Day had marked the first L205 deadline-meaning that on January 1, the government was supposed to start demolishing houses. A few days before the holiday, though, residents received a letter saying the deadline had been extended. Still, he said, they were divided as to what to do. Some wanted to cut a deal; others refused to acknowledge the government"s claims. The division ran so deep, Emmerik said, that half the town had skipped the last general meeting.

Christiania had changed, he said. Back in the day, residents acted as one. There was no obstacle too large for them to tackle. They managed ma.s.sive construction projects, like laying sewer lines by hand, and renovated thousands of square feet of rundown buildings, without a penny from the government. Now, he said, the government refused to acknowledge the collective and dealt with Christianians individually. And infighting was crippling Free Town"s efforts to fight back.

It"s somewhere between ironic and ordained that Christiania was established on the former site of much historic Danish military action. The city ramparts on the eastern border of the neighborhood, first built in 1617, were reinforced later that century after Sweden"s siege of Copenhagen. The Badsmandsstrdes base, while active, housed the Royal Artillery Regiment as well as ammunitions laboratories and depots.

The following day, Emmerik walked me through the base to show what Christiania"s settlers had done with the place. Poison-gas-testing chambers in Mlkebtten had been transformed into airy pieds-a-terre with flower boxes, pastel-trimmed dormers, and wind chimes. Nearby in the Fabriksomrdet district, blacksmith Charlotte Steen had renovated a bomb factory-designed to have the roof blow off in an explosion-into a Usonian town house, complete with a ship"s bow and oak rafters collected from old boathouses in Holmen. One of the most stunning homes in Christiania was occupied by machinist Helge Pyramide. Over nine years, he constructed his twelve-sided house, "The Twelve-Edge," using roofing tiles from a sugar factory and volcanic ash for insulation.

"The government can"t seem to figure out how to solve this Christiania problem," Emmerik exclaimed as we strolled past a girl brushing a pony in one of Christiania"s eighteen stables. "We keep telling them, we already have! We"ve been doing it for almost forty years!"

The defining characteristic of Christiania"s homes, Emmerik explained, comes from the fact that it"s against the rules to sell or trade them. Real estate speculators-and the excessive appreciation of property values-ritually kill art communities in the world"s greatest cities, he continued. In Christiania, when residents move, they simply pack up their belongings and leave. So house design is based solely on the owner"s needs, not resale value or even building codes. The result is some of the most innovative and acclaimed architecture in Europe. Several books have been published on Christiania"s eclectic aesthetic. Well-known architects, like Merete Ahnfeldt-Mollerup from Denmark"s Royal Academy, regard the district as a kind of "adaptive reuse" laboratory.

Christiania has come up with several social innovations as well, Emmerik said. After the ban on hard drugs in 1979, the community initiated a drug rehabilitation program that cured 80 percent of partic.i.p.ants. (Five percent was considered successful in Copenhagen at the time.) Collective property management gave the poor and handicapped a higher standard of living while simultaneously creating a nurturing environment for artists. Every year the community feeds thousands of homeless and poor people on Christmas Eve at a ma.s.sive banquet thrown in the Gray Hall. Businesses like Christiania Bikes (the maker of Emmerik"s ride) have received government awards for entrepreneurialism and ship their products all over the world.

Emmerik explained the financial workings of Free Town as we strolled past the community kindergarten, designed to integrate children into society by using neighbors" yards as a playground. (In the 1970s, students were fed macrobiotic food, toy weapons were banned, and children held their own meetings.) All of Christiania"s tenants pay a $380-a-month "use fee," regardless of the size of their home, and businesses pay according to their potential for profit. The cash is then put in a pot and divided between public programs like the building office (for structural repairs), children"s facilities, the post office, a weekly newspaper, recycling, public toilets, water, and electricity. Christiania then pays the government a group value-added tax and additional funds for public services like water and electricity. (Since the 1990s, the government has commended Christianians as "model citizens" for never missing a payment.) Leftover New Year"s Eve fireworks boomed overhead as we walked along the ramparts in Free Town"s eastern quarter. A spotted mutt the size of a greyhound trotted by, and Emmerik boasted that because Christiania"s dogs go leashless, they are more docile. Gingerbread shacks with rainbows and Shivas painted on their walls practically ab.u.t.ted the water. The front window on one was broken, and the owner had left a note that read, "If you are going to steal, then at least do it from people who can afford insurance." Across a small bridge leading to the other side of the moat, Emmerik pointed to another sign. This one announced a meeting to refuse the munic.i.p.al government"s demand that everyone declare an individual address. (Christiania still uses a common mailbox: DK-1440, Copenhagen.) We ended the tour near an afterschool center. There was a small beach and a canoe on the sh.o.r.e. Emmerik said the community built the center to keep kids out of trouble after school. Then he pointed to a mock real estate sign posted on the side of a hill that read, THE FREE STATE CHRISTIANIA IS NOT AND WILL NEVER BE FOR SALE.

The edict echoed a well-known quote from Ahnfeldt-Mollerup regarding the government"s desire to shut Christiania down. It was not so much anarchy the government wanted to control, she wrote, as it was proprietorship of a successful venture: Each and every little village in every corner of [Denmark] now has a small shop where one can purchase the style that already can be found at Christiania. So one can wonder about the anger and aversion many of the conservatives feel about this quarter"s culture, one can wonder why Christiania should be replaced by conventional housing at just this point when the quarter"s maladjusted style has become so mainstream. Perhaps the point is actually that it should not be torn down, but instead that bourgeois Denmark wants to buy Christiania and is displeased about it not being for sale.

By 9 A.M. on May 16, 2007, the fires around Christiania had died out. Workers cleared barricades while commuters pedaled along Prinsessegade Road to the Knippelsbro bridge. The air still smelled like burning rubber, but on Pusher Street, hash dealers were already out, covertly peddling sticks of Afghan creme.

The Copenhagen daily newspaper, Politiken, condemned the police raid as needless provocation. The Palaces and Properties Agency a.s.serted that the Cigar Box had to be demolished under the auspices of L205. By midday, Christianians had rebuilt the structure. That afternoon, they held a housewarming party hosted by one of Denmark"s best-known DJs.

The standoff continued through the summer, and Christiania"s lawyer, Knud Foldschack, threatened to file seven hundred property rights lawsuits if the government continued to pursue L205.

Deadlock had long been Christiania"s best defense. By the time lawsuits were decided, often a new government-looking to avoid controversy-had taken over the Folketing and buried the case. Foldschack estimated that his seven hundred cases would take a year to settle once filed, at which point the political landscape could change dramatically. The wait, he said, would be worth it. "You can only destroy a situation, a possibility, like Christiania, once," he said. "You can never restore it."

But Rasmussen called for and won-albeit by a slimmer margin-a surprise early election in the fall of 2007 and secured a second term. In Christiania, optimism dimmed. Ten to twenty police patrols a week randomly searched homes and ha.s.sled residents. (A year before, Amnesty International had called for an "independent mechanism for the investigation of human rights violations by the police" in Christiania.) Half the community wanted to fight the government; the other half wanted to take the government"s offer to lease their homes at below-market rates. In the summer of 2008, Foldschack registered the lawsuits, and the fate of Christiania returned to the courts.

Many demonized Rasmussen"s government for wanting to gain access to one of the last, and most valuable, undeveloped building sites in the city. But residents like Richardt Lionheart said that even before government intervention Christiania was evolving into the sort of free-market community it had been founded in opposition to.

During my visit in 2006, Lionheart spoke of the darker currents beneath Christiania"s bohemian surface, and we continued the conversation via e-mail until last winter. He first came to the neighborhood in January 1972, to put certain sociological and political beliefs into practice. A week after arriving, he moved into the "Blue House" with two women. The threesome took over the second floor, which had been a changing room for soldiers. They removed rows of steel lockers and set up a telephone and hot water heater. They laid hardwood floors, decorated the place, and hosted meetings and parties. His greatest hardship in those days proved to be his relationships; eventually he moved out. When he returned two years later, he fixed up his own place and has lived there ever since.

Lionheart"s first skepticism about Free Town came in 1984, when he was living in Colombia on a psychology research grant. That winter he received a letter from his brother, Eric, who"d been diagnosed with cancer and had fallen behind on his rent in Christiania. The district Eric lived in threatened to kick him out if he didn"t pay. Richardt flew home and settled the debt, but, he said, things haven"t been the same since.

A few years later, Richardt"s neighbor died and his widow-a Swede who was new to Christiania-moved into her husband"s house. But residents of the district told her she was not welcome. Richardt stepped in and, in keeping with Christiania rules, called a meeting to resolve the matter. Three days before the meeting, a posse broke into the woman"s house, piled her belongings in the street, and reclaimed the home for someone of their choosing.

"Anarchy is a beautiful thing if people have very f.u.c.king high morals," he said. "If they don"t, then it"s lynch mobs. This was a lynch mob, I"d say. And the same with consensus democracy. You have to have very high morals to make it function. You have to have a very high level of energy as well."

There were other stories of arbitrary law and violence in Free Town. Since the beginning, the community used thugs to enforce rules and chase unwanted residents out of the neighborhood. In the housing pool, preferential treatment was sometimes given to applicants who had friends on the inside. In 2005, residents offered a troop of gay actors a home, then kicked them out after determining that they didn"t comply with the "Christiania lifestyle." In 2004, a television journalist was violently threatened when he tried to erect a small house in Christiania, against neighborhood rules. The following spring, the drug scene on Pusher Street made headlines when six masked men fired automatic weapons into a crowd to avenge one of their members who"d been thrown out of Christiania. Several people were injured, and a twenty-six-year-old man was killed. In April of 2009, a twenty-two-year-old man"s jaw was blown off and four others were injured when an unknown perpetrator lobbed a grenade into a crowd outside Cafe Nemoland.

The government blew many of the stories out of proportion in its campaign to close Christiania, but some of its base a.s.sertions were grounded in disquieting facts. While Christianians refused to recognize the government"s authority, two thirds of the community received welfare and used city and state services like hospitals, schools, and roads. More than one hundred residents owned cars, and, because they couldn"t park in Free Town, they clogged the streets of Christianshavn with them.

One point almost everyone, including most Christianians, agreed on was the fact that Free Town"s drug trade had become its Achilles" heel. On one hand, the $174-million-a-year business filled area shops, cafes, and restaurants and made the neighborhood the second-most-popular tourist stop in Denmark, after Tivoli. On the other, it brought violence and a power imbalance that diminished Christiania"s community mentality.

One night during my stay, I visited a former hash dealer some friends had introduced me to. "Andy" unlocked six deadbolts on two doors to let me into his apartment. He lived in Frederick"s Arc, the largest timber-frame structure in Denmark and site of the 1979 heroin blockade. He"d put on weight since he stopped dealing and now went to the gym every day and played with the Christiania soccer club. His biceps and neck were well defined. He had a buzz cut and shifty blue eyes, seemingly aware of every movement in the room at all times.

Andy"s apartment was outfitted with nearly everything a twenty-something bachelor could want-and, seemingly, everything Christiania historically opposed. The living room was appointed with a leather wraparound couch and a pool-table-size wide-screen TV. The kitchen was equipped with a mult.i.tude of fancy stainless-steel appliances and granite counters. The hardwood floors were sparkling new.

After starting as a runner on Pusher Street in the late nineties, when he was fifteen, Andy eventually set up his own stand in 2001. Individual busts were frequent leading up to the 2004 raid, he said, but the risk was worth it. When he was twenty years old, he was clearing $1,000 to $2,000 a day. He took extravagant s...o...b..arding trips to Switzerland and spent $12,000 once on a two-week bender in Miami. He didn"t work on Christiania"s public projects or attend meetings. In a socialist country where income tax ranges from 43 to 63 percent, Andy was an instant member of Copenhagen"s nouveau riche.

Since he quit pushing, Andy had been trying to reinvent himself. He pointed out a painting he"d been working on that seemed like an interesting abstract until he explained that it was a depiction of an enraged dragon breathing fire. I asked about an a.s.sortment of electronic equipment in the corner, and he said he was also learning how to DJ. When I inquired what he thought of L205, he answered that he hoped it would pa.s.s over, that things would stay the way they were. "I do what the lawyers tell me," he said. "I just give them money and trust they will do the right thing."

I went the following night to see Pusher Street for myself. The alley was empty, apart from three eidolic shapes crowded around a fire smoldering in a fifty-gallon drum. I approached a middle-aged woman reclining on a pile of wood chips and asked if she was selling. She nodded and asked how much I wanted. I told her I had one hundred kroner. She pulled a black stick the size of a small pencil from her pocket, and I handed her the money.

I went into Woodstock-Christiania"s first bar, which opened in April 1974-and was. .h.i.t by a wall of blue smoke and blaring country music. The bartender was either very drunk or very strange and laughed every time I counted out on my fingers how many beers I wanted, which was one. I found a seat at a long pine picnic table in the back and rolled a joint. As I tapped the b.u.t.t on the table, a woman at the other end spilled her hash on the floor and yelled at me. She circled the table, alternately pointing and screaming for the next five minutes. When I finished rolling, she slammed her fist on the table and yelled, "Remember that?!"

I smoked the joint quickly and left. The clouds had receded for the first time since I arrived and there were a few stars overhead. I walked down Long Road, past the Raisin House and the stupa. The candles under the Buddha had been replaced and were burning, and a few lights were on in the surrounding homes. Less than a half mile from downtown Copenhagen, I couldn"t hear any traffic or any noise at all. I thought of Emmerik and the original vision of Christiania and knew for certain that it was long gone. But walking into Maelkebtten with blue moonlight reflecting off the courtyard, I still had to wonder whether that meant this place shouldn"t exist.

French philosopher Michel Foucault said that there are no such things as utopias. A true utopia, he said in his 1967 lecture "Of Other s.p.a.ces," is a figment of our imagination. It is merely a concept of society in its perfected state. What people refer to as utopias, he said, are in fact heterotopias, "simultaneously mythic and real contestation[s] of the s.p.a.ce in which we live."

"There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization," he said, real places-places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society-which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted Utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality.

Heterotopias come in many forms. From sacred grounds of ancient cultures to military schools in the twentieth century to cemeteries today, they reflect a certain aspect of the society they reside in. They also typically occupy a certain era, Foucault said, when "men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time."

In May 2009, it seemed Christiania"s era was drawing to a close. The Eastern High Court ruled in favor of the Palaces and Properties Agency in the cases Foldschack had filed. Christianians decided to appeal to the supreme court. The court said it would announce a decision in January 2011, and the waiting game was back on.

Four months later, Christiania celebrated its thirty-eighth birthday with a day of parades, free food, and DJs. Supp

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