If visiting the Middle East, you might want to visit a famous landmark or two -- the Pyramids of Giza and the Temple of Karnak perhaps, or the Western Wall and the Umayyad Mosque. But without a doubt, a trip to the Middle East would be incomplete without a stroll down an alley. The images that follow highlight the sorts of things you will find, with an emphasis on the people who live and work here.

A young woman at home in the City of the Dead (Cairo, Egypt)

A man and his sewing machine of fifty years (Cairo, Egypt)

A man walking past a poster of his President, Bahsar al-Assad (Damascus, Syria)

Cats at dawn, awaiting srcaps of food from a balcony (Damascus, Syria)

And a street cleaner at dawn, picking up the scraps other human beings left behind (Damascus, Syria)

A passageway and pedestrians (Aleppo, Syria)

People and their personalities (Tripoli, Lebanon)

The souk at day's end (Tripoli, Lebanon)

Young girl drinking from a public fountain (Tripoli, Lebanon)

Children in the Old City (Sidon, Lebanon)

More children in the Old City (Sidon, Lebanon)

A silent procession (Jerusalem)

A Russian tour group in the Old City (Jerusalem)

Late that same night in the alley where the Russian tour group once stood, things are shuttered and empty. But in the morning, here and in the alleys throughout the Middle East, bodies and noise and work will fill the spaces once again.

 

And visitors, of course, are welcome.

 

 

 

 

Joel Carillet, chief editor of Wandering Educators for years, is a freelance writer and photographer based in Tennessee. He is the author of 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. To learn more about him, follow his regular photoblog, or purchase prints, visit www.joelcarillet.com. This article was originally published in 2010.