Thinking about my homeland is made all the easier because today, for the first time in months, there are clouds in the sky over Damascus. The last time I saw clouds was by the Mediterranean Sea, in Lattakia in north-western Syria about ten days ago. Thus the clouds also serve as a reminder that I really must press ahead and finish off the long-promised write-up of my road trip around the compass points of Syria, the country I have called home for the last five months.
Love to y’all (whether you're in Syria, Singapore or Surrey),
Dave
PS: Raf is also working on a write-up of his own thoughts about the trip. When he has sent it to me I will publish it here, as a guest commentary, so that you get an alternative perspective on the same places and events.
PPS: Most of the photos in this post are courtesy of Raf.
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Raf and I had spent a few days hanging about in Damascus, giving him time to acclimatise, and for me to say goodbye to some good friends who were leaving Damascus to move onto new adventures (Dan to Jordan, Munir to Lebanon).
Then we decided the time was ripe to set out on a planned epic trip around Syria. As a prelimiary we took a trip to the National Museum in Damascus, where we could see artifacts from many of the places we were hoping to visit: from ancient and enigmatic civilizations in the Euphrates valley to Hellenistic and Roman Syria (below) and on through the advent of Islam to the modern era. It was a good taster of some of what was to come.
Therefore, at lunchtime on 4th August, we negotiated through the bustle and the touts of the sprawling and confusing Harasta bus terminal and caught a luxury (i.e. air-conditioned) coach to Palmyra/Tadmur.Palmyra (again): 4-5 August 2006
I don’t really have much new to say about Palmyra that I didn’t already say in a previous post. Needless to say the ruins are still awe-inspiring and it’s still very nice to watch the sunset from the castle.
It was perhaps, a little quieter than when we were there before, but it was fairly quiet back then too. The street traders were still desperately trying to eke out a living selling silly trinkets and camel rides to the trickle of tourists wandering around the ruins, but they did not detract too much from the splendour of the extensive historical site.We only spent one night and a morning in Tadmur, during which we saw a little more than had been possible the previous time I was here (one extra underground tomb, and a bit more of the ruined city, including the market place and assembly hall). Then we caught another coach travelling deeper into the Syran desert, heading for a rendezvous with the Euphrates river.
Deir Az-Zur: 5-6 August 2006
We got off at Deir Az-Zur – straight into the office of a local policeman. But it was fine, he was just logging the foreigners who were coming onto his patch. I guess he was more concerned about stopping (or at least controlling) the flow of young men coming to volunteer to fight for the insurgency across the border in Iraq, just over 100km away, than with two young Brits coming to look at old ruins. I guess that we didn't fit the profile of potential suicide bombers so, after briefly taking down our details, we were soon on our way.
Deir Az Zur turned out to be an interesting place. It’s a busy market town of about a quarter of a million inhabitants, that was apparently something of a boon town in the 1990s. However, it still feels pretty much off the (relatively lightly trodden) Syria tourist circuit.
The souq is very busy, populated with a mixture of people. A high proportion of the women are totally covered, but the infamous black chador is a rarity here. Instead the clothes were beautifully decorated and brightly coloured in greens, reds, blues and black. Many girls wore plastic flowers in their hair and were heavily made up as if going to a wedding rather than just to the market. Then again, maybe it's the place where they find their future husbands so I guess it's not so different after all.
The people at the budget hotel were lovely – so kind and friendly. We ended up having an impromptu joint language lesson – in English and Arabic. One man offered to put me up at his house free of charge in exchange for months of English lessons!
The town is nestled against the south bank of the Euphrates River which is a very impressive sight. It’s almost half a km wide, fast moving and full of islands and positively humming with life.
We had a nice meal in one of the huge restaurants on the banks of the river, the air around us full of bugs. Even at ten at night it was horrendously hot. Thanks to the proximity of so much water it was also uncomfortably humid. There was a constant flow of sweat over our bodies just sitting down and eating. Needless to say our sleep was disturbed.Sweat-drenched and sleepless, we opted out of heading further east for a day trip to the ancient site of Mari and the Hellenistic/Byzantine ruins at Dura Europos. The fact that our plan to take the sleeper train to Aleppo was scuppered by the fact that there were no longer any trains to Aleppo was our excuse, which meant we had to catch a bus during daylight hours. However, in reality I don’t think Raf and I could bear the idea of spending the day walking around the desert being roasted.
Whilst planning our next move we sat in one of the many juice bars that you find in all Syrian towns, just south of the central square and souq. It suddenly struck me what a surreal scene it was. There was I, sipping a fruit cocktail with my friend from London, talking on my mobile to Claudia in Damascus whilst two teenage girls in niqab (face covering), shyly glanced in our direction and giggled.
I was longing to get out of the desert, but it was a little sad to leave Deir Az-Zur so soon. It left a pleasant impression on both of us. Instead we took a bus, following the thin line of green vegetation that clings to the banks of the Euphrates as it threads it’s way through an otherwise dry landscape. This was an epic 5-hour journey. To kill the time I watched some of the Egyptian film that was showing on the TV screens. Hobak Naar (Your Love is Fire), a recent hit starring Mostafa Amar and Nelly Kareem, was a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, transplanted to modern-day Alexandria, this time with a happy ending.
Finally we left the river behind, entering the greenary and hills of northern Syria. Eventually the Citadel of Aleppo appeared on the horizon, like an island above the urban sprawl and pollution mist spread out below it. It was an impressive sight.
Aleppo: 6-8 August 2006
We arrived in Aleppo, the city of 3 million that is often described as Syria’s economic capital, in the early evening. We arranged a room in one of the many hotels around Sharia Baron, just north of Aleppo’s Old City. This part of the city is home to all the budget hotels and tyre shops, and also has many fruit juice bars and cinemas (below). It's an eclectic, busy place.
Once we had offloaded our bags we headed to Jdeideh, an old residential part of the city (17th, 18th Centuries), which is now one of the centres of the nightlife. It’s full of cafes, restaurants and bars and really comes alive after dark, with glammed up families, couples and groups of young people strolling, posing and hanging out. Here we had a rooftop dinner soundtracked by the greatest naff Western love Songs album in the world… ever! part 3 (i.e. Celine Dion, Robbie Williams, Chris De Burk). The music may have been bad but the food – a mix of French and Italian – was superb, and the view of the city’s skyscape was fantastic.Neither Raf nor I were up for late one - a combination of lack of sleep and long travels meant we were knackered - so we foresook the Aleppan nightlife and headed back to our hotel relatively early. There I engaged in a brief chat with some of our neighbours (2 Syrians and an Iraqi), who ended up trying to convince me to become a Muslim and marry a Syrian girl (I did say it was a brief chat!).
The next day we spent mainly in the Old City of Aleppo. Aleppo’s citadel and souqs I have already discussed. I’ll just add that the souqs seemed a little quieter than when I had previously been there back in April. We were told by one shopkeeper that business was bad at the moment – he blamed the war in Lebanon for keeping the tourists away.After two days in Aleppo we felt it was time to move on. I really loved the place, far more than during my previous visit, and could've stayed longer to explore it in more detail. However, we only had a limited amount of time in which to complete our circuit of Syria. Therefore, we packed our bags and headed to Aleppo train station. We had decided to take the scenic – but slow – train ride through the Jebel Ansariyya which divides coastal Syria from the interior. It was nice to take a train which people still stopped and waved at, as we wound our way past the villages in the Orontes valley and in the hills. The highlight was seeing the sunset over the mountains.
Lattakia: 8-9 August 2006
Lattakia is a prosperous, trendy place (population: about 400,000) that prides itself on its liberalism and shows little sign of its ancient past – just a few Roman columns standing in the city centre remind you that Laodicea was an important port in Seleucid and Roman times. Instead its architecture mainly consists of bland concrete apartment blocks, reminiscent of Lebanon less than 100km down the coast. The people are more likely to be clad in Western labels than in traditional jalabiyya or abiya. The hijab count is very noticeably down on the rest of Syria. I got the impression that the people of Lattakia pride themselves on their sophistication and modernity. Nevertheless, despite it's reputation, it's not all champagne and caviar - we saw several poor people wandering through the streets scavenging through rubbish. However, relatively speaking, this is still the home of Syria's bold and beautiful.
On the first night we wandered around the centre of town, checking out the cool kids and the nice restaurants, before ending up on the Corniche where we had a fruit juice and smoked an apple flavoured nargileh (water pipe). However, this was hardly comparable with Beirut's famous seafront promenade. Instead of picturesque views of the beautiful blue Med, we were afforded prime views of the cranes and machinery of the modern port which intrudes between the city and the sea.
Another surprising thing was how soon everything closed down. Not long after midnight the vibrant city centre had become a virtual ghost town - not exactly 24 hour party people!
The following day we took a microbus up to Kassab, a pretty little mountain village just a few km from the Turkish border. We climbed up into the mountains overlooking the town, and enjoyed the views and the relatively cool air.
However, because there was basically nothing else to do there, we didn't hang around for long. Within a couple of hours we were on board a microbus heading back – this time to the beach. Syria’s premier coastal resort (Shaat al-Azraq - the Blue Beach), wouldn’t win any prizes for cleanliness, and we heard that there are more beautiful beaches further up the coast, but it was still great to enjoy an afternoon by the Mare Nostrum.The beach was fairly crowded with families. The bikini and bathing suit count was nil. Women bathed in the sea still wearing their hijab (head scarves) and jalabiyya (full length robes).
I guess the sophisticated young Lattakians were sticking to the private beaches and not mingling with the tourists from other parts of Syria. In this sense it was more Great Yarmouth than St Tropez! In the early evening we befriended a couple of young lawyers from Lattakia. Together we sat on the rocks, watching the sunset whilst sharing a nargileh, drinking Arabic coffee and eating fruit grown in the garden of one of the men.
We talked in a broken Arabic-English about our respective countries, the war in Lebanon, and our travels. It was only soured by the fact that after we parted company we arranged to meet later in town for a drink – a commitment that they did not honour. Maybe the Syrian paranoia got the better of them – who knows. We even briefly wondered if they might have been secret policemen – viewed through this lens their seemingly innocent request to look at the pictures of our travels became transformed into a well executed and friendly interrogation. However, we soon dismissed all these silly thoughts and grabbed a drink in a US-themed café/diner frequented by the cool kids, which to us seemed a little tacky. Then we headed for a quiet restaurant for an amazing feast of grilled fresh fish and mezze – hummous, moutabbel and fattoush. It was a real treat, well worth the price of admission. Then we retired to our hotel to nurse our full bellies, too stuffed to face the idea of a staying out. This was just as well because, as with the night before, Lattakia was not exactly jumping at 1:00!
Qal'at Salah Ad-Din: 10 August 2006
The next day we headed back into the Jebel, this time bound for Qal’at Salah Ad-Din (Castle Saladin). This former Crusader castle fell to the legendary Kurdish warrior after a siege of just two days in 1188. It’s a huge castle, located in beautiful green hills covered with pine forests. It’s main feature is the fact that it is built on a ridge, with natural cliffs on two sides, and the third side protected by an impressive man-made chasm carved out of the rock (below). 
Unfortunately, the lower castle is ruined and overgrown, and thus inaccessible. However, we still spent a happy couple of hours exploring the upper castle, enjoying the panoramic views of the landscape and trying to avoid vertigo as we looked down from the battlements into the sheer drops on all sides. 
Then it was time to head from the verdant landscape of Syria’s Med coast and return to the desert conurbation where I live. This meant another long and relatively uneventful coach ride.Bosra: 13 August 2006
After a couple of days of partying in Damascus (bon voyage Fabian!) we took a day trip southwards to Bosra near the Jordanian border. Its another Roman/Byzantine ruined town, much like Palmyra but considerably smaller, and mainly built of black basalt, which contrasts quite dramatically with the deep red soil of the fields in the surrounding countryside. However, unlike Palmyra, people still live amongst the ruins, giving the place more of a sense of living history.
The main place of interest is the well-preserved Roman theatre. It is protected by a fortress which was added in the 11th-12th Centuries. It's quite wonderful to emerge from the dark tunnels of the Arab fortress into the space and light of the auditorium. This was one of the biggest of its kind in the world, with a capacity of about 15,000 spectators (note: this was a theatre designed for staging dramas and not an amphitheatre, which were often considerably bigger and where more brutal events, like gladiatorial contests, were held).
Then, leaving the theatre/fortress and heading to the Old City, it was interesting to wander for a while amongst the jumbled mix of ancient ruins and buildings still being used as contemporary shops and houses, down Roman colonnaded streets (below) and over crumbled down buildings. 
Within the Old City is the ancient monastery (below) where, according to legend, a young caravan leader called Mohammed met the Christian monk Bohira. This Mohammed went on to become a great Prophet and the founder of Islam, which meant that there were a number of early mosques in Bosra, though the earliest still standing dates back to the 12th Century.
On the way home I struck up a conversation with the man sat next to me. It turned out he was an Ancient History professor from Baghdad University who was on a holiday in Syria with his wife and two young daughters. I started to talk about the Iraq war, and apologise for the behaviour of the idiot Bliar, but he soon changed the subject back to more comfortable territory. I had a moment of realisation that I had been a little insensitive. My clumsy attempt at compassion had actually come across as pity, reducing his dignity, and briefly broken the holiday spell whereby the troubles in his homeland were but a distant, almost forgotten nightmare. Thus the rest of our conversation lingered on our mutual interest in the ancient history of the region.
As we got off at Baramke bus station in Damascus he expressed the hope that one day soon Iraq would be safe enough for me to visit it. Then we parted company with “anta sharif’ – the Iraqi equivalent of best wishes. The encounter had made me feel a little sad. I thought of the contrast between the peace of Syria and the daily bloodbath on the streets of Baghdad and hoped that this learned and courteous man and his family remain safe and well.
This encounter brought to an end our thrilling ten day trip around many of the main sights and places of Syria. Overall we had a fantastic time. Being outside Damascus, and its attendant high number of English speakers helped to consolidate my Arabic skills to date (still pretty limited, but at least able to get us from A to B without too much trouble). Everywhere we went we were greeted by friendly courteous people, many of whom were very keen to chat about a host of topics (but especially politics). If I ever had any doubts, this trip certainly cemented my deep interest in the history, politics and culture of this region.
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