Well, after a hellish day of traveling, I’m back in the US of A.  It was something of an unhappy arrival.  I had a short scheduled layover in JFK  airport in New York before proceeding to my new home of Washington DC.  Unfortunately, neither the fates nor the Department of Homeland Security were with me.  First, I got stuck behind an American dude with his new Spanish wife and kids and their dachshund (which had previously managed to escape during landing).  That required some amount of paperwork, including the immigration official checking through the Spanish woman’s secret envelop (she was obliged to carry it with her, but was not able to see it before the immigration officer did).  When it came my turn, the fellow was courteous enough, asking me the usual questions about what I was doing in the Middle East, etc.  He assured me, “don’t get me wrong, I’ve visited Egypt.  I like Egypt.”  “I don’t,” I replied, while trying not to be too impolite.  He did, however, find it quite strange that I would chose to take a trip to Sudan for tourism.  “It was winter and we wanted to go somewhere warmer,” I said.  “I’ve been to to Cairo in winter and it’s not that cold.”  “We’re from California,” I clarified.  “‘Nuff said!”

He then escorted me back to another room, saying to one of his colleagues, a Mr. ‘Abd al-Aziz, “I know you’re gonna hate me, but I got a CTR109 [or some such nonsense code] for you.”  “You’re right.  I do,” came the response.  My name had popped up on the monitor and I was getting some special treatment.  Me, a young Egyptian kid with an unfortunate name, a guy with a bit of a zabiba and a skullcap, an Egyptian family and a very tall New York Jew working between Cairo and Chicago, sporting a shaved head that nevertheless failed to disguise previous decades of Orthodox grooming.  Depending on what you consider the latter, I was the only white person in the room, and the second to last to get questioned.  Before it was actually my turn to go through the process, Mr. ‘Abd al-Aziz made a bit of small talk about Syphilis (that’s our cat), asking what kind of cat she was.  I responded that she was a tortoise-shell.  His answer was that he had some special breed at some point (I forgot what it was), but he had to get rid of it because it was “too emotional.”

After the poor kid who shared a name with an equally unfortunate Arab was waved off by ‘Abd al-Aziz, annoyed that he was obliged to bother this kid and have him open his bags, and after the New York Jew was advised to write to his Congressperson to complain that he is stopped and processed like this every time he goes back between Cairo and the US (writing the head of the DHS just won’t be going high enough, they assured him), I was then once again asked a number of routine and, considering the situation, not particularly invasive questions about what I had been doing in the Middle East, none of which would have been news to anyone reading this blog.  About two-thirds of the time was spent not answering questions, but waiting while Mr. ‘Abd al-Aziz typed who-knows-what into the terminal.

Next, I had to proceed through customs, where I spent about 15 minutes waiting for someone to show up.  The Customs official on duty was tied up dealing with the 20 cartons of Marlboros getting smuggled in by an Egyptian dude.  The person that finally came again asked me a number of questions, most of which I had just answered with the previous two guys.  Again, most of the time was spent waiting for the Customs official to type whatever it was he was typing.  I should have just told them to save themselves the trouble.  I’ve already done plenty of typing, they could just cut and paste from this blog.

Of course, by this point, I had missed my connection, so I was obliged to wait around for four hours for the next flight.  Contrary to the Egyptian handlers who were more than happy to take my baksheesh in exchange for slinging my cat into the X-ray machine, the woman at JFK prit-near had a conniption when I slid Syphilis in her cat-carrier toward the X-ray machine with every intention of removing her before reaching the machine.  I walked to the gate, where I was immediately assaulted by the sound of CNN turned up to 11.  What’s more, aside from a couple minutes here about the police shooting of a serial killer and 15 seconds there about Honduran President Zalaya in the US, CNN spent every other moment “covering” the Michael Jackson memorial—”coverage” which largely consisted of footage of black cars driving around backed by repetitive interviews with people who had nothing interesting to say about Michael Jackson or anything else.  I tried for a few hours to sleep through this ridiculousness with old Bruce Springsteen blasting in my ears to drown out CNN.  Eventually, I realized there was a bar upstairs, so I proceeded to medicate myself with a Sam Adams cherry wheat beer.  The cherry flavor was over the top.  I felt like I was eating a McDonald’s cherry turnover with a beer chaser.  Welcome to America.

The following day, we planned to go somewhat early to the Dibeen Reserve, one of the less-developed of RSCN’s nature sanctuaries, hoping to avoid the fees associated with the parks that have more facilities for visitors.  I asked the hotel owner where we could get some foul, a question which prompted him to lead me once again by the arm to the window, whereupon he gesticulated wildly in a manner that almost seemed to be a formal sign language in order to try to communicate to me where it was.  A few Arabic words were thrown in for good measure, though they made little sense without a full understanding of the sign language.  Nevertheless, I felt like I had a reasonable idea of what he was trying to communicate and we headed off in search of breakfast.

After a good long while of searching, we ultimately found nothing, but got some juice in the short term.  After that, we changed strategies and I started asking people on the street.  People were generally suggesting a place called Yaseen, but it took some triangulating to eventually find it.  We almost went to a different foul place a couple doors down, but a fellow who had previously heard us asking corrected us.  There was little to distinguish the place.  No sign hanging off the side of the building (every tiny little business in the area seemed to have one), and even a relatively small crowd.  The small sign painted on the glass just above the door simply read YaseenCo (in Arabic), and that’s the only thing I could find identifying it.  It fits the description “hole-in-the-wall” better than pretty much any other restaurant I’ve ever visited, and judging from the fact that everyone on the street suggested it, it seemed to be the local favorite.

The fellow who dragged us away from the first foul shop got the attention of the servers and we were henceforth treated like royalty.  We were given the special seat in the back, and when one server handed us our two immense loaves of flat bread, his superior inexplicably snatched them from off of our table and put them in the pile with the rest.  He then brought our two bowls of foul with tahini, though we now had nothing to eat them with.  I grabbed a loaf of bread from the communal pile next to me and the server rushed over and snatched them out of my hands: “you need fresh, hot bread!”  Charming as this was, I was getting a bit frustrated and hungry.  A minute or two later, that fresh bread arrived and we dipped in to our wonderful breakfast.  I apparently ate a bit too quickly and eagerly, and the fellow who seemed to be the proprietor refilled my bowl before I was finished.  I actually didn’t need any more, but felt that it would be rude not to finish, so I left completely bloated.  On the way out, we attempted to pay, but the shop owner waved us off.  We stood there and I waited for a break in the line of customers to insist again on paying.  He refused.  “Maybe later,” he said.  “Tomorrow”, I said.  “Tomorrow, God willing.”

With that, we walked (I waddled) back to the car and we drove to Dibeen.  The route was along small, steep roads, passing near a Palestinian refugee camp.  There was an entrance kiosk, remarkably similar to the kind you’ll find at State and National Parks in the US, but no access gate, and no one was at the kiosk.  We drove through and wound through forested lands until we found a place to park.  It was wonderful.  The smell hit us immediately.  We walked around for a bit, mostly just bushwacking with no particular destination in mind.  With two protein- and carbohydrate-rich breakfasts sitting in my gut, I only made it about 500m before I had to stop and take a rest.  We sat on a pair of rocks and admired the trees that looked to me like Manzanita, with smooth, peeling, red bark.  It wasn’t the lushest of forests, but it was certainly a departure from the sort of landscape we’d been riding and driving through since leaving Slunfeh.

We carried on again, and I was attracted to a little gully and the possibility of running water.  It was dry, and I was content to sit there and rest some more.  Elaina was rather more interested in making use of the calories in her stomach for something besides simply digesting them, so she went exploring for a bit and took some artsy pictures of the tree bark.

With a number of other things on our agenda for the day and me acting like a giant, puffy, starchy, overcooked fava bean, we went back to the car to head to the next destination.  Someone had decided to come by the kiosk while we were in the reserve, and we were unfortunately obliged to pay a few Dinars (still much less than the entrance at any other reserve).

Our next stop was the ruins of Jerash, where we attempted to catch up from our lost time the day before.  We wandered all around the vast complex, once a significant city of the Roman Empire.  We were both most struck by the two theaters, at the North and South ends of the complex.  Some serious effort had gone into restoring them, as they were the venues for the annual Jerash festival, apparently a fairly popular festival for visitors across the Middle East.

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The pictures above will give you some idea of what the place was like.  I was getting some serious ruin fatigue by the end, but nevertheless enjoyed my time there.  Unlike with its natural reserves, Jordan’s antiquities are not the sort of tourist cash-cow on growth hormones that I’ve come to expect from such places after my various jaunts around Egypt.  It was mostly fairly tasteful, and what vendors there are around the place were standoffish and seemed to rely more on their finesse in posing suggestively on ancient monuments (see below) than persistent nagging.

On the way out, we stopped at one of the cafeterias for some water and stimulants.  Still unused to the availability of alcohol, I considered buying a beer, too, but thought better of it, as I was already feeling parched and over-heated.  Meanwhile, the gaggle of Asian tourists kept us entertained.

Our next stop was the ruins of Umm Qais, another ancient Roman metropolis, though we mostly weren’t going for the ruins.  The drive itself was one of the attractions.  Elaina triangulated between guide-book maps, my GPS and road signs to navigate us off of the major highways.  There were some beautiful vistas and amazing mountains.  I tried not to get too annoyed with the endless speed bumps.  They’re a sensible way, I suppose, to ensure people don’t drive at unsafe speeds through residential areas by appealing to their self-interest (or interest in not destroying their vehicle, anyway) rather than complicated and expensive enforcement mechanicsms.  Still, I think the best way to encourage people to drive sensibly, if there must be automobiles, is to design roads around communities and the natural environment.  With narrow roads winding along routes that don’t bisect human and animal habitats, drivers will necessarily have to go at an approriate speed, without having to rely on police officers or artificial “traffic-calming” measures.</transportationrant>

Our route involved a couple wrong turns and took a bit longer than expected, but we nevertheless managed to get to Umm Qais before sunset.  We had heard about the amazing views here, and that was what we came for.  Signage here was not altogether clear, though.  There were three guys hanging out near the entrance, and I asked them about “al-istiraha”, taking that as the translation for the “Resthouse” that was written about in the guide book.  They pointed us in the right direction, saying “the Romero is that way,” refering to it by its association with the hospitality company, the Romero Group.  One of them asked if we needed a guide and then insisted on showing us a “shortcut”.  The ploy was obvious from the beginning, but I went along with it (I think maybe Elaina wasn’t too pleased).  He spoke quickly and pointed out the Ottoman contribution to the place.  He then proceeded to spin a couple yarns about the place that made it totally obvious he had no idea what he was talking about.  First, he made reference to the Roman name for the city: “Gadara”.  “Look,” he insisted, pointing over toward the parking lot, “see this?”  Uh…no.  He went out on a precipice, “Look!”  He pointed to the old city wall, “It’s al-jidar.”  So, in his logic, the Roman name “Gadara” is derived from the Arabic word “jidar”, wall.  Riiight.  He then said something about how Umm Qais actually comes from the word al-muqays.  Plausible, I suppose, but still a bit flimsy.  He then realized we were unimpressed and in a hurry to catch the view and eat before sunset, so he pointed us the way and asked for some baksheesh.  I considered it as a discount on the entrance fee.

We reached the restaurant and found only one other party there.  The view was indeed astounding.  In the foreground was the River Yarmouk, flowing from below the Golan Heights of Syria to its confluence with the River Jordan.  A bit beyond, we could clearly see the southern portion of the Sea of Galilee.  On the other side of the Galilee was Israel, and beyond that was the Lebanon Mountains.  Seeing all of these political entities brought into unity through the confluence of various watersheds put into stark relief the absurdity of nation states and borders, particularly these nation states and these borders.

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As we watched the sun descend behind the Lebanon Mountains and Israeli lights begin to twinkle along the Sea of Galilee, our dinner arrived.  It was definitely well done, and the price was reasonable, particularly given the setting.  I’m not a food writer, so I won’t go into the tartness of the shankleesh or the pique of the pasta or whatever.  It was just good, though I found the meat wasps to be a bit of a distraction.  They were mostly after Elaina’s kabobs, but they still bugged me.

After sunset, it seemed that more people were arriving.  I had thought that the restaurant closed at sunset, but I guess we were wrong. There were groups of hip youth and families roaming around the ruins and checking out the view.  As we left, the parking lot seemed to have turned into something of a local party spot, and more people were still arriving.  It was nice to see that, just as in Syria, ancient ruins are a part of the public commons that the public actually uses and enjoys.  In Egypt, antiquities seem to have little interest to most locals, except for the money it brings from archeological teams and tourists.

After our visit to Umm Qais, we drove back to Ibrid and our hotel.  Although we took more major roads, it was a bit stressful driving at night for the first time in the Middle East (memebers of the US diplomatic corps are frequently reminded not to drive at night in the region because of the danger on the roads).  There were some nutty drivers out there, but the speed bumps were thankfully generally marked with reflectors so as not to surprise the driver, and the embassy warnings, as usual, seemed a bit overblown.

Rather than spending another night in Damascus, riding our bikes back and forth clear across town, we opted for the more expensive alternative of finding a service taxi.  The first guy to approach us, to the consternation of the guard on duty who chastised him for approaching us outside of the designated servees area, offered us a fairly reasonable rate of S£2500 (around US$55).  The staff at the hotel had told us to expect to pay some S£3500 for a dedicated ride with our bikes.  This was about twice as much as we’d pay for a bus, but still not so bad, particularly considering the added convenience.  “Helping” us to load our bikes in the back of the vehicle while the driver went to go register our passports was a disabled Lebanese fellow who claimed to have learned English hanging around US Navy sailors, a claim backed up by his demeanor and accent.

Our driver seemed anxious to get on the road, but he was amiable enough.  He stopped in a neighborhood off of the highway to pick up a package that was going the same way and then we headed out of town.  I took note of the cluster of stuff hanging from his rear-view mirror:  a tiny Quran with its own little wooden house and a little ornament that read “We are all Jordan”, expressing the sentiment of unity among a nation largely comprised of immigrants, particularly Palestinians (of which our driver was one).

Before crossing the border into Jordan, Elaina reminded me to make a final call to Abd as-Sitar and Salwa.

The border crossing was, predictably, a pain in the butt, and the Syrians seemed to be particularly suspicious of me for some reason.  One officer spent a good five minutes going through my passport, page by page, then going through it again, page by page, this time under an ultraviolet light.  I have no idea what he was looking for, and the driver was getting at least as impatient with him as I was.  The next layer I had to go through on the Syrian side was also very suspicious, and asked me a number of questions, the answers to which would have been entirely obvious from paperwork in front of him, most of which was generated by his fellow Syrian officials.  I was starting to get annoyed when Elaina reminded me that this was just a fraction of what most citizens of this part of the world have to put up with upon entering the US.  Entering Jordan was thankfully much more straight-forward:  one of the benefits of traveling among “those who are with us.”

I changed my Syrian Liras for Jordanian Dinars at the border and we carried on.  The trip to Amman went by fairly quickly, and upon reaching the more urban areas, numerous kites appeared in the air.  It seems to be a particularly Jordanian pasttime, as I’ve never seen it in Egypt or Syria.  I asked our driver what they call kites in Arabic and he responded, “tayara wara’”:  paper airplanes.

He dropped us off a kilometer or so from our destination, hoping to avoid the worst of downtown traffic, and having a decent idea of how to get where we were going and bikes to get there easily, we did not protest.  The hotel was clearly set up for the western tourist, as there was a bank of internet-ready computers near reception (whether they actually had internet or not was up to the fates) and copious signage in English about visiting local sights and navigating the city.  After asking for a recommendation about renting cars, I found they also had a special relationship with a local rental company.  The latter, however, did not generally deal with one-way rentals, so the drop-off fee in al-Aqaba was a bit steep.  We decided to check with the larger companies which had offices in both Amman and al-Aqaba.

After settling in to our hotel room, we went to go get some dinner, which consisted of kabobs and meat-filled bread things, the name of which I’ve forgotten.  Our next stop was the nearby telecom store, where I went to pick up a new SIM card.  It turns out I should maybe have done a little research first.  The salesman rushed to sell me a plan which sounded like it had decent rates.  It turns out that the initial price was more than it should have been, even if the rates are pretty good.  What’s more, it was called the “Army Plan” and, as one might guess, was reserved for military personnel.  Soldiers were able to buy five such plans for themselves and friends and family, and it seems that our friend here made a little profit off of one of his own plans.  Perhaps they don’t air the PSAs here that they do in Syria, the ones that show the subjects of the PSAs committing various socially-corrosive sins (cheating tourists among them), whereupon they and their families begin to develop unsightly flesh-eating ulcers while they live high on the hog.

The following day, we headed off to the land of rental car agencies at King Abdullah Gardens.  I had heard about this particular concentration of such firms, but was still not prepared for it.  There were some 50 different companies here, and entire mall of just rental companies adjacent to an amusement park.  There were the international standards:  Hertz, National, Avis, Europcar; as well as a plethora of local joints with names like “Fancy” and “United” and the ever-popular “Jerusalem”.  We checked at a few of the big names, then a local company and discovered that they all had exactly the same prices, with a few differences in terms and drop-off fees.  Avis set itself apart simply by having a very small car, a red Chevy Spark.  The price was cheaper than everywhere else, and significantly, they were a “reliable” brand, so we went with that, a little reluctantly.

The vehicle did not inspire confidence from the get-go, as it sputtered through the parking lot.  It wasn’t clear to me just how bad its condition was because it had been some time since I’d driven anything at all, and I’d been in plenty of cabs in Cairo that seemed even worse.  We parked the vehicle near our hotel, checked out, put all of our stuff in the hotel storage, and then walked up the steep hill to “Wild Jordan”, the offices for the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (Jordan’s premier environmental quasi-NGO), as well as a high-end nature-y cafe.  We picked up some brochures for the various reserves around Jordan, including price lists for various hikes and accommodations.  We took these to the cafe to peruse while waiting for our food, on the way passing the dedication plaque:  “This Center was a gift to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from the people of the United States of America.”  Indeed, from the prices, it was a gift that kept on giving, as American and European tourists are required to spend as much as a couple hundred bucks just to go on a hike (most of which include a compulsory guide).  And it is clear that the Kingdom is the primary beneficiary, as the prices are scarcely cheaper for Jordanian visitors, and only the very few people in the direct employ of the RSCN benefit from this “gift.”  Such is the neo-liberal ideal of a park system.  Gone is the notion of parks as a public good, a common natural heritage that should ideally be freely accessible to all, or at least accessible for a nominal fee.  Now the focus is on conserving nature primarily in order to better monetize that natural heritage, to sell it at a premium to the privileged in the form of eco-tourism.  It was an easy move to make in Jordan, where the notion of environmental conservation (and the prerequisite notion of the environment as separate from the human realm) has always been the province of a Western-educated elite.  It should not be so easy in a place like California, and yet things are quickly headed in this direction there.

So, while eating our over-priced nature-y lunch, we resolved to avoid the reserves as much as possible, or at least their fee structures.  Upon paying we were asked by the waiter, “do you have an ATICO card?”  Clearly confused, wondering which language he was speaking, he pointed to the brochure on the table advertizing the program, which was a sort of Diners’ Club thing, with at least the honesty to call itself a “loyalty scheme”.

We walked back down to the hotel, retrieved our stuff from storage and packed everything in the car, which we discovered had been given a parking ticket, despite the absence of any signage indicating what the offense may have been (the ticket itself provided no further clues, as the offense seems to have been “parking”).  We departed in any case and headed toward Jerash, one of the ancient Roman Decapolis cities, taking a number of wrong turns on the way.  During the trip, it became increasingly obvious how bad the condition of the car was.  It eventually started to overheat to such an extent that we had to pull over to let it cool a bit.  After it had cooled some, we checked the oil, which seemed normal, and the coolant, which was bone dry.  We called the number that had been given to us for a mechanic (I’m glad I had had the foresight to at least get this number in advance), who told us to get to a shop in Jerash (then just a few kilometers away), put some water in the coolant tank and call him back.  We pulled into a shop, lifted the hood, and let the car cool down for a while before adding water.  The staff at the station were helping out, supplying water and trying to diagnose the problem.  We called Yusef (the mechanic) and told him the situation and he indicated we could bring the car back in to replace it.  The accountant of the shop came out to talk to us for a bit, discussing issues of great social import—mutual respect and tolerance, etc.—in very poetic terms, which seemed an even greater achievement given his poor command of English.  It was mostly necessary for me to translate his words into Arabic to understand his meaning, although the general ideas were amply communicated simply through his earnestness.  When the conversation eventually turned to more practical matters, he suggested, “why don’t they bring a replacement car to you?”  Why, indeed!  I’m not used to interacting in such a service-oriented environment, or at least not on the receiving end of it, so the thought hadn’t occurred to me.  I called the Avis office and Mr. Yusef again, and they agreed to have a replacement car brought to us.  I handed the phone to one of the attendants to have him explain our location better.

Elaina then suggested that we go visit some of the ruins, as we were just a 100m or so from the entrance and could see Hadrian’s gate from the shop.  So, I called Mr. Yusef back, and tried to explain our plan to him, first in English, as his English seemed pretty good, and then in Arabic when he didn’t understand what I was saying.  I was happy to discover that I was able to make more complicated arrangements in Arabic here.  This had proven difficult in Syria because of the difference in the colloquial, but the Jordanian is either closer to my accustomed Egyptian, or there are simply more Egyptians here, and more exposure to it.

So, we went to the site of the ruins at Jerash, but one of the attendants asked about the payment of “fees” for their unsolicited help before we left.  I suggested we could talk to Mr. Yusef about that when he arrived.  At the entrance to the ruins, one of the vendors (considerably less pushy than their Egyptian counterparts, I should point out) informed us that the place would close in 5 minutes.  The guys in the ticket office seemed utterly uninterested in taking our money, so we simply walked in.  The fist thing after Hadrian’s arch was the ancient hippodrome, where they apparently still hold chariot races on occasion.  We carried on to the main part of the old metropolis and were turned back after we admitted that we hadn’t any tickets.  We would have to come back the next day apparently.

We stopped at the cafe adjacent to the parking lot to kill some time before heading back to the shop.  Our waiter was Egyptian, and spoke English with a British accent that gave me less-than-fond memories of our acquaintance in Aleppo, you remember, don’t you?  The insuferable one.  His mother was British.  He saw us pondering the plastic bags filled with water all around the restaurant and volunteered, “They’re for the flies.  You know how?”  No, not in the least.  “The flies come up to it and see their reflection and think there’s a really big fly about to eat them.”  Well, there weren’t any flies, anyway.  Upon learning that I was living in Egypt he remarked, “everyone’s trying to leave Egypt and you moved from the US to live there?!”

Back at the shop, we waited around for a bit, in the meantime striking up a short conversation with another of the attendants of the shop, the one who seemed to be in charge.  I asked for his help deciphering our ticket and he said it would be 10 Dinars (not anywhere on the ticket), and added that the cops in Jordan were horrible, not like the cops in the US.  I politely disagreed (at least about US cops).  Mr. Yusef showed up with a truck with our replacement car on it and hurriedly maneuvered it into position.  I greeted him and held out my hand, to which he held out his fist, as people are wont to do when they feel their hands are too dirty to shake yours.  Mr. Yusef and the latter attendant exchanged some words, and I asked the attendant if accounts were all settled.  He replied that everything was taken care of.  I ask Mr. Yusef about any paperwork, and he replied, again that everything was taken care of, that he doesn’t deal with the paperwork.  Hopefully we won’t have any big surprises when we drop off the car in al-Aqaba.

Mr. Yusef took off with the crap-ass car on his truck and we loaded our stuff in the new car, then maneuvered to get some gas.  This turned out to be considerably more complicated than one might think, as this was one of those cars built with some tricky ways to get it into reverse.  After five minutes, during which queuing customers were becoming increasingly frustrated, I had finally fiddled with enough things in and around the stick shift to figure it out.  We were helped by the first attendant in getting our gas, and he asked again about the fees.  I said I thought Mr. Yusef had taken care of that, and he responded that he had not, so we paid him the 10 Dinars for their services and approached the head attendant for a receipt, as we wanted to make sure that we had a record of payments we’d made due to the breakdown and an empty gas tank.  It became clear through the discussion about what should be on that receipt that the first attendant had not charged us “fees” for their services, but baqsheesh for his personal welfare.  Oops.  As we were leaving, I heard the main attendant demand 5 Dinars for his share of the “fees.”

We headed toward the town of Irbid in our incredibly driveable rental car, where we were pleaded with to buy more cheapo sun hats and Jordanian flags by persistent street vendors who were unimpressed by the fact that Elaina had already bought one of each.

In Irbid, we checked into a very spartan hotel room with an animated fellow running the place, bouncing about, gesticulating wildly and generally depending on non-verbal or semi-verbal means of communication.  We took two trips to the balcony in as many minutes for him to explain food and parking in the neighborhood to me.

We went to go get some food and internet, but the latter took some precedence.  I waited for Elaina to do what little she had to do while the guy at the desk implored me several times to sit down and use the internet in the otherwise empty place.  I tried to explain that it would be difficult for me to stop if I started.  In the end, he refused payment altogether.  Somehow I had developed the idea that this was a peculiarly Syrian thing, and that Jordanians would be just as intent on payment as Egyptians, if perhaps rather less pushy about making the sale.  Not so, apparently.

We then went to get some shawarma sandwiches, passing a liquor store on the way and deciding to bring a couple beers along with the sandwiches back to the hotel to enjoy.  At the sandwich shop, we met another Egyptian ex-pat, this one having lived in Germany for a decade.  Yet another pleasant conversation, and a bit of a relief after having felt that I could no longer speak Arabic while in Syria.

Back at the hotel, we enjoyed the first booze we’d had in a while, and our pre-sleep conversation consequently lingered a bit longer than usual—a nice change of pace.

But, before getting to this centerpiece, it was necessary to navigate through the outer layers of this monument to Arab military might. I rode the few kilometers to the panorama from our hotel along a major highway (appropriately named 6 Tishreen). The guards were welcoming enough and let me take my bike through the metal detector and park it next to their kiosk. They directed me to the waiting area, where some 50–75 soldiers were milling about in their dress uniforms, eating potato chips and drinking sodas, waiting for their group to be escorted through the panorama. I, the only non-soldier around, was to wait here for an English-language guide to show me around (free of charge, they were keen to point out). I was struck by how NOT obnoxious the soldiers were when at ease. I suppose this is one of the positive by-products of compulsory military service: you don’t get a soldiery comprised of gung-ho nutjobs who’ve had the idea drilled into their heads (not to suggest they weren’t sympathetic to it from the beginning) that they are the elite saving grace of “the free world”, which would flounder in anarchy (*GASP*) were it not for their well-honed ability to kill, maim and degrade all manner of “bad guys.” I don’t mean to say that compulsory military service doesn’t train people in the same sort of rank nationalist sentiment, just that it tends to be a tinge less elitist and exceptionalist and, at least from my observation, doesn’t encourage as a model of social comportment what might best be described as “douchebaggery”. If you want to read an interesting psychologizing of the behavior of a fascist soldiery, Wilhelm Reich’s “Listen Little Man” is a good one, if not particularly analytical.

After some 10 minutes of waiting, my guide approached me and asked me to follow her while she told me about the panorama. Her English was descent, but, as with many tour guides, she likely learned her spiel from someone whose English was not so great, and at a time when neither was hers. As a result, whenever she stuck to the script, her English was a bit unclear and too fast. First, she directed me to the display to the left of captured Israeli war machinery, including a pile of metal I gather was once an aircraft. On the other side was the war materiel used on the Syrian side, mostly Soviet-made. In the middle was a grand statue of Hafez al-Assad, acting as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and giving the command to begin the attacks. Beyond was the panorama itself, built, as was the case with the Egyptian version, with the help of North Korea. The building was constructed in such a way as to suggest the form of an Islamic citadel, with rounded walls, archers’ slits and parapets for optimum defence. The main building, however, was flanked on either side by reliefs that showcased North Korea’s contribution, with Communist-realist representations of “The Correction,” a period of time during which Syria turned to import-substitution schemes and invested considerable resources in the building of public works, the panorama among them.

Inside, there was a circular hall with paintings representing great Syrian independence victories through history: the signing of an ancient treaty at Ebla, Zeinobia’s declaration of independence at Palmyra, Mu’awiyah’s founding of the Ummayad dynasty at Damascus, Salah ed-Din’s consolidation and, finally, the pinnacle: Hafez al-Assad preparing for the Tishreen War. This was similar to the Egyptian telelogy, which of course went back to the Pharoahs.

Our next stop was the diorama, where I was instructed, before all the soldiers arrived, that I should stand up at the beginning when the national anthem started. The soldiers streamed in, in a remarkably disorganized fashion, with their own tour guide behind. I thought it noteworthy that they picked young, attractive women not wearing the head-scarf to be tour guides for both visitors and Syrians. The diorama depicted the glorious capture of the Israeli observation post on a hill above Quneitra, one of the early key goals of the Tishreen War campaign. This was analogous to the initial surprise attack of the air forces, then led by Hosni Mubarak, represented in the Egyptian version. That latter display included a lot of lights and flashes that went off at odd intervals, with model airplanes bobbing and swinging about oddly on strings over the model landscape. The North Koreans apparently learned from their mistakes in Cairo and simply built a static diorama of the scene which remained dark, a film of the action in the background, until the climax, when the scene was lit up with strobe lights, conveying the heat of battle. After the end, my guide asked me how I liked it. “It was better than the Egyptian version,” I responded.

Finally came the big shebang, the panorama itself, which was introduced to me by enumerating the hours it took to complete and the number of stage lights used to illuminate it. My guide told me that, after seeing it, I could leave if I wanted, as there was no English version, and it would be disruptive for her to translate. Most foreign visitors, she said, become bored after a while, as they can’t understand the Arabic. But, oh no, there was no way I was going to miss the main attraction. Someone gave the order for some soldier to remove himself from a seat at the end so that I could have one, despite my protestations. We sat in the middle of the panorama, mostly all facing the same direction, while the platform slowly rotated around to give the audience a gradually changing scene of the battle at Quneitra. I did, indeed, become tired of the narration, but the panorama remained captivating. The exacting skill that went into the thing was impressive, with the scaled models below more-or-less seamlessly blending with the two-dimensional representation on the outer wall. There were blown-up tanks, cowering Israeli soldiers, variously triumphant and heroically martyred Syrian and Egyptian soldiers, a baby doll hung by its head on a swingset, presumably by those brutal Israelis. Meanwhile, the soldiers took turns scrambling over the chairs and trying to strike an appropriately somber pose while having their pictures taken by their comrades with the panorama in the background. When it was all over, my guide tried to summarize a bit, talking about the injustice and attrocity of the Jews—I mean Israelis (her slip, not mine).

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The denoument consisted of a series of photographs and displays of paraphenalia tracing the life of Hafez al-Assad, from his beginnings as a student organizer fighting French occupation, to starting his own family, through his rise through the ranks of the military. The focus here was a Communist-realistic painting depicting the inauguration of some great public work (there were several of them in the background, so it was hard to tell), with the marble floor, stairs and red carpet of the ceremony blending into the 3D version at our feet. You can always trust North Korea to drive a point home with a sledge-hammer. At the opposite end of the hall, hanging over the exit was this lovely portrait of Hafez al-Assad and Kim il-Sung, who my guide assured me were great friends in real life.

Outside, I had a refreshingly mundane conversation with a Kurdish guard. He seemed more interested in my bike than anything else, and asked to take it for a spin, to which I obliged. He rode it for about ten meters and exclaimed, “there’s something wrong with your bike! I can’t pedal backwards!” It took some effort to explain why I wanted it that way. He then asked what I was doing in this part of the world, “you just want to see what life is like here?” I responded, yes, basically. “But you’ve got television!”, a bit of a joke. He seemed a little perplexed when the subject of compulsory military service came up and I expressed that I was happy not to have to work in the service of one of the more blunt instruments of backward US foreign policy. From his expression, I got the sense he wasn’t terribly critical of that foreign policy.

Sufficiently schooled in the discrepancy between the propaganda unity of Syria and its more complicated, messy diversity, I rode back to the hotel to prepare for the bus to Amman.

Our day in Damascus was slow, easy and relaxing. We wandered again around the old city, visiting the palace of As`ad Pasha al-Azem, the 18th century governor of Damascus. It was bigger and more elabrate architecturally than its smaller cousin that I wrote about in Hama, but the latter had been more carefully restored and, on a purely aesthetic level, found it more impressive. This Azem Palace in Damascus was more like a museum, with the focus being on the objects filling the rooms, and less on the rooms themselves. The cheezy dioramas were still there, and there were a great many artifacts that had been left in the old house or recovered from elsewhere. There were copious signs detailing the historical context of this period of the Ottoman Empire, although there was only passing mention of the diversion of resources (including the cutting off of Damascus’s public water supply) that was necessary to build this magnificent palace. What mention there was of such matters was left unexamined, while other signs made note of all the luxurious appointments built into the palace, such a retreat and respite being a virtual necessity for a man holding such grave daily responsibility as the Pasha. What a bunch of hogwash.

Perhaps the reader is thinking, “and what about you, o intrepid traveler? What has been so taxing about three weeks of vacation (and two more to go), wandering about the countryside of Syria, treated as a guest of honor wherever you go, that you should be in need of such ‘rest and relaxation’ in Damascus?” Touché, dear reader, touché. And it is not without a twinge of guilt that I announce that I’ll be giving up on the part of this trip that has been genuinely challenging: the cycling. Between my bum knee and Elaina’s “delicate constitution”, as she puts it (with a touch of irony, I presume), cycling through the much less hospitable (in terms of the terrain and the elements) territory of Jordan seems like stubborn folly. Instead, we’ll be doing the unthinkable: renting a car. It’s a little more than we’d like to spend, but will allow us to visit the sort of out-of-the-way places we might have hoped to have seen by bike, and is certainly cheaper than a knee operation.

With that in mind, the only obligation we spent the day attending to was figuring out how to get ourselves to Amman via bus (it was not possible to rent a one-way car to al-Aqaba from Damascus). The rest of the day was spent wandering, resting, relaxing and generally vacationing, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Try not to let your jealousy get to you.

I woke up good and early—around 4am—to head out toward Damascus.  Luckily, my alarm wasn’t too loud, and I woke up quickly, so it didn’t seem to wake anyone else up.  I got up and moved my knee around a bit and hoped that the lack of pain would continue through the day.  I packed up the few things I had left out to dry (soap & towel) and headed out, applying some more massage cream and popping a couple ibuprofin on the way.  Things were feeling OK for the first few steps, but then the pain quickly returned, and descending those 340 steps (not counting the ones from the dorms) was a bit of torture, and took about 20 minutes.  

June 19th

I finally reached my bike and changed my shoes and repacked, then headed over the rough, uneven stone road to the parking area.  I took a few pictures of the Frenchmen’s tuk-tuk in the pre-dawn light, and admired the view and the cool air one more time, then spotted a bright Venus in the sky before me.  I sighed and put my feet up on the rack to coast down to the valley.  By the time I got there, it was already past 5am.  I had hoped to at least get to an-Nebek by sunrise (around 5:20), but that was not in the cards, though the sunrise from where I was on the hill was enough to allay my scheduling concerns.  I ascended in the saddle for a while, but the hill soon became too steep for me to bike, and I discovered that, contrary to the day before, grinding the gears out of the saddle was way more painful than pushing up hills in the saddle.  As a consequence, except for a couple short stretches where the road leveled out or I was assisted by a stiff tailwind, I walked the 3km or so to the summit, by which time it was already 6am.  The shallow descent to the riverbed before an-Nebek was also slow, as there was a bit of a headwind that canceled out the downward slope.  The pain was there on the shallow climb out of the river bed, but I calculated that it would not be so painful as to prevent me from making it the few hundred meters in elevation before the long descent into Damascus.

I stopped at one shop in an-Nebek that looked like they had lentils, but it turned out to be a sweets and nuts shop, so I carried on, after a pleasant exchange with the shopkeeper.  I eventually crossed over the main highway to Damascus and into the town of Yabrud, where I spied a foul & hummus shop with it’s door open.  The shopkeeper appeared in the doorway and I shouted across the median to ask if he was open.  “Shuweyya”, he responded, “sort of”.  I turned back and asked what was available at the moment, and I stopped him when he got to the foul.  It took a little while to heat up, but he eventually brought me a wonderful bowl of foul.  Although a couple of the beans were understandably still a bit cold on the inside, it was delicious.  No haggling this time over whether I would be paying him.

The main part of Yabrud was still ahead, and it was a lovely town, with a small mountain with steep cliffs in the middle.  I had to stop a while to relieve myself at one of the parks at the base of this mountain, a task made more difficult by the fact that none of the W.C.s were yet open.  The place where I eventually went to scramble behind some rocks had seen better days, with a large concrete swimming pool, now dry.  Scattered on the ground were the parephernalia of unfortunate life paths: torn open spray paint cans, etc.  There was, however, a pair of working fountains nearer to the road.  In fact, there seemed to be public founains every 100m or so.

As I finally made my way out of Yabrud, the pain really kicked in, and I started to wonder if I would make it to Damascus.  Unfortunately, I was already some 15km away from the main highway, and there were no microbuses on this road (in fact, hardly any traffic to speak of at all, which was nice in its own way, of course).  I carried on, clumsily attempting to take a couple more ibuprofin while pedalling and negotiating space on the road with tractors.

While I waited for the meds to take affect, I tried to distract myself with the beautiful scenery: the rolling hills covered with olive groves and the valley I was riding through, flanked by tall mountains on either side.  The road slowly climbed to a crest, with a lower range of mountains to the left and a higher one—the Anti-Lebanon range—to the right.  On the left appeared a massive gap in the mountains at the ancient site of Ma`loul, the one place on the planet where Aramaic is still a living language (they apparently could only barely understand the dialect Mel Gibson chose to use in his “The Passion” epic).  Not particularly keen to ride down that hill only to have to ride back up, with a bum knee, I passed up the opportunity to visit.

The beautiful landscape I was riding through and the pain resulting from the effort battled for my attention for some time, and I finally stopped for a significant rest at the town of Hush `Arab, buying a large bottle of water and drinking a good portion of it.  Back on the road, my knee was suddenly feeling better, and, while it still hurt, it was no longer quite such a distraction from my enjoyment of the surroundings.

After Hush `Arab, there were a number of turns, most of them very poorly marked—if at all—that made me glad that I had marked the route previously on Google Earth.  Something changed about the character of the place here.  The few vehicles on the road were no longer pickups and farm vehicles driven by sun-baked, kufeya-wearing men, but late-model passenger vehicles with people in modern dress in the seats.  Tiny real estate offices started popping up on the side of the road in the middle of the orchards, which were turning from olives to cherries, many of them quite young.  A healthy, well-fed kid was selling boxes of cherries on the side of the road while his father looked on proudly in his modern casual wear.  I half expected to see a hand-painted sign with the Arabic version of “Lemonade 5¢“.  While there were a few grizzled old farmers around, the place seemed to be experiencing a sort of rural gentrification, becoming a playground for the Damascene nouveaux riches to fulfill their dreams of a bucolic life in the countryside.

I took a dirt road shortcut through one cherry orchard to reach the main road that crossed a shallow set of ridges separating two parallel valleys.  The paved road was a beautiful winding path through boulder-strewn short hills with green vegetation that separated it from the adjacent valleys.  Shortly thereafter began the only climb since an-Nebek that I might normally have considered difficult.  I walked much of the way to the summit, still unable to tolerate much grinding out of the saddle.  At the top, there was a lovely view across the valley to the next, shorter, road summit, with the rock outcroppings of the canyon beyond visible in the distance.

After that second summit, the road turned steeply downhill, with hairpin curves and uneven pavement, forcing me to eat my words about how descending is the easy part.  My hands and elbows were beginning to hurt more than my knee from hills so steep they threatened to toss me over the handlebars and the constant need to clutch hard at the brakes.  The bullhorn handlebars I’m using are great for climbing and navigating through traffic, but not so comfortable for steep, technical descents.

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The stress on my hands and arms, however, gave me ample excuse to stop and take in the scenery, which is something that often falls by the wayside on a long descent.  The rocks and canyon were as impressive as I had hoped they would be, towering precariously hundreds of meters above me.  At the base of the huge cliff, there was a public park that seemed like a popular weekend getaway.  The road then climbed a bit to the town of Halboun, sadly one of the dirtier places I’ve seen in Syria, seeming all the more dirty given its surroundings.  The vibe, for lack of a better word, was also considerably less welcoming.  Here, instead of gawking at the weird foreigner or shouting hellos in his general direction, the kids kept to their business while eyeing me cautiously and whistling as if to alert the neighbors.  I felt more like a cop in the inner city of a rust belt metropolis than a bike tourist in a Syrian village.

After Halboun, the road again followed the canyon floor until it reached a place I believe is called `Ein as-Sahib, a narrow gap in a sheer cliff through which the road passes.  It was quite a sight.  On the other side, it was necessary to climb a steep hill out of the canyon either to the left or the right.  I took the road less traveled to the right, walking the entire 2km.  The road offered some views of what I take to be Roman monuments carved into the face of the mountain.

After the peak, the road then descended through another dirty town (no one whistled here, though), ad-Durayj.  From here, there were a few rolling hills, and then a smooth descent into the increasingly urban areas of Damascus.  After a bit of wandering around the general vicinity of the hotel at which Elaina had reserved a room, I found the place and asked if we could switch the reservation to a double instead of a single (she had originally reserved a single, thinking that she would be arriving before me).  They originally said they didn’t have any doubles, but then somehow discovered one, just as I was about to go look for another place.  I took my bike into the “garden” behind the hotel, then delivered my stuff up to the room, trying not to collapse in my bike shoes, with a suffering knee, on incredibly crooked, off-camber stairs.  I went back down to take care of the paper work, guzzled a mango juice in the fridge they had next to reception, and glanced outside, where I caught sight of Ailred, one of the two tuk-tuk driving Frenchmen I’d met the day before.  He saw me and recognized me at the same time, so we chatted for a bit and I confirmed they were in the hotel just next door.  I suggested we should hang out later, and he went off to meet Sylvain (the other Frenchman) at the internet cafe.

I then napped in the over-heated hotel room for a while, hoping that Elaina would be showing up soon.  At around 6pm, I decided I would venture out on my own and get a sandwich and check the internet in case she had sent me an email.  I walked out the way Ailred had pointed when he mentioned go to the internet cafe, stopped to get some more phone credit, found a juice and sandwich shop right in front of the internet cafe and sat down on the steps for some orange juice and a bland french-fried potato sandwich.  I then spent entirely too long at the internet cafe, processing photos and GPS tracks (I’m currently writing this from Irbid, Jordan, in case you’re wondering why it took so long to post) before heading back to the hotel.

Elaina had apparently already come and gone, with the guy at reception joking that she had gone to the police station to file a report.  I went to wait on the balcony to enjoy the evening breeze (which was not so much reaching our room) and Elaina arrived shortly after.  “Hey sis!” I beckoned.  She had apparently already been in Damascus for half-an-hour when I first left the room, but it took her two hours of riding around, triangulating between multiple sources of conflicting information to find the place.  You can read her blog for more on that.  I told her about the tuk-tuk tourists and she said “I want to meet them,” to which I responded that they were right next door.  Being hungry (that sandwich was wholly unsatisfying), we went to find a place to eat, and hoped that we might find Ailred and Sylvain at the adjacent hotel and invite them to join us for dinner.  As we talked outside the hotel with an employee from our hotel about where to go, the two emerged.  They had already made plans with a friend of theirs who works with disabled kids, doing ceramics, but they invited us along.  We met up with her on the opposite side of the old city, and she invited all of us to the courtyard of her place, where we met a bunch of other people in the building, and they were kind enough to offer us apricots and sweetened rose water.  Another person living in the building was an American, who’s name I’ve now forgotten, studying Arabic.  Apparently, there’s a lot of them.  Our host, whose name we never got in the first place, took us to the Jabri House, a place I’ve now been three times.  It was a Friday night and it was packed, with live music.  No one clapped.  After the band left, one of the players handed the `oud he was playing to one of the restaurant workers, who apparently owned the instrument.  He eventually began to play, without amplification, which did elicit some applause—from us at least, as we were right next to him.  The food was lovely and the company grand, but we soon headed back to drop off our host and walk back to the hotel, this time from Bab Touma and the road just outside the old city walls.  I struggled up the stairs like an old man (only stairs and uphills on the bike hurt my knee) and slept, as they say, the sleep of the dead.

As I look back upon the ride to the monastary of Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi, I have to ask myself if I wasn’t engaging in a bit of self-flagellation.  It was certainly painful, if it didn’t exactly bring me closer to God.  It started out well enough.  I got up good and early and had to awaken the hotel manager to let me out the metal cage.  I got on the road at about 4:45am, taking the main road out of Homs.  I ended up on the highway for a bit, but exited and pulled a bit of a sketchy maneuver, turning around and going against traffic (I thought it was a two-way road).  Soon enough, however, my intended road appeared parellel to the ramp I was on, and I rode this frontage road the remainder of the way to an-Nebek.  In most places, it was simply the old Homs-Damascus highway, and it crossed back and forth across the highway every so often, almost always at surface level, with no under- or overpass.  There were a number of stretches where it was right next to the highway, which gave me the peace of mind of not having to worry about being run over, while I still had to deal with the consistent engine noise.  For the most part, however, the road was a good distance from the highway, and, as was the case the day before, was largely used only by the occassional motorcyclist or over-laden produce truck.  I’m not sure why, but I got a particular kick out of one stretch of the road that went through the middle of a wide valley, with the northbound and southbound lanes of the highway on either side of the valley.

June 18th

It was a long, not-too-steep ascent, but the twinge of knee pain that had developed the day before was getting progressively worse.  Riding while seated was particularly painful, so I spent much of the time out of the saddle, grinding up a hill that generally would have been a mild effort.

After passing this rather oddly-designed hospital, where I briefly considered getting a knee operation, I soon arrived in an-Nebek.  It was still fairly early, so many places were not yet open.  One place whose sign offered foul and hommos in fact only had sandwiches.  I’ve discovered that a great many places are like this in Syria.  Foul and fatteh shops have turned into sandwich shops, grocers have turned into electronics stores, copy shops have turned into clothing boutiques, all without changing their ownership or signage.  Anyway, I bought a yogurt drink and asked about foul, whereupon I was directed around the corner and up a side street.  The place, even more laudatory of President Bashar al-Assad than normal (his portrait is everywhere), was thankfully open, and the owner was very gracious, offering me tomatoes, mint, fresh cold water and tea with my breakfast while the pair of soldiers who came in just got their plain ole bowl-o-foul.  He did the fairly common thing of telling me that breakfast was on him.  To my surprise, however, when I protested, he quite quickly relented, “OK, that’ll be 50 Lira.”  I didn’t mind at all, but I was surprised.

I carried on, grumbling silently about the pair of boys who had carelessly knocked my bike over and been unable to figure out how to right it, while my knee still complained loudly about being put back in service.  The trip to the monastary had not been planned, so I didn’t have a route plotted, and I took a few wrong turns before finding the right road that went around the old tel and into the mountains.  The initial ascent wasn’t too steep, but nevertheless quite painful.  Near the summit, there was a major mining operation going on in a nearby gorge and black smoke arose from the opposite side of the road from burning trash.  There was a lovely view from the summit, as long as one ignored the dumping of construction materials into the gully one saw in the foreground.

Just as I was about to begin the longish descent, a couple guys who work at the monastary drove by in a truck and offered me a ride.  This would have been silly if it were just the descent, but that descent was followed by a very steep uphill, so I accepted.  Unfortunately, a kilometer down the road, they realized they had forgotten something in an-Nebek, and apologized that they would have to go back and kicked me out of the truck.  The descent was quite steep, and the knowledge that I would have to go back the same way the next day tempered my enjoyment of it.  The road bottomed out in a broad valley and I took the left up to the monastary, up a very steep, mostly straight road.  I walked most of the 3km up the road, as walking didn’t hurt the knee at all.  The two guys in a truck passed me up just as I was reaching the parking lot.  I was planning to push the bike the final 200 vertical, unrideable meters, so I changed my shoes.  I soon discovered, however, that the path soon turned into stairs, so I had to figure out what to take with me and lock up the rest near the bottom of the path.  Tired, overheated and in pain, I took my time walking up the 340 steps to the monastary.  I didn’t actually count those steps, but I noticed part of the way up the number 90 written in marker in Hindi numerals on one of the steps.  I began counting from there and discovered numbers written every ten steps.  There were also occasionally trash bins on the way, also with the number of the step written on them, just as we sometimes write our address on our trash bins in the US.  Signs reminding visitors to pack their trash or deposit it in the bins lined the path, mostly directed at Arab tourists who have not had such an ethic ground into them for the past two generations as Europeans and North Americans have.

I was beat when I reached the top, but managed to utter something about being a visitor to a passing figure.  That passing figure happened himself to be a visitor, and he directed me to the monastary itself, where the responsibles could be found.  I was a bit surprised to find the grounds positively swarming with European and Syrian tourists, and to find so many signs of Deir Mar Musa absolving itself of responsibility for lost or stolen items.  A woman eventually emerged to ask if I wanted tea or water, and I declined both, being well-provisioned on both counts.  She then asked if I was planning to spend the night and I responded that I was, if that was possible.  “Ahla wa Sahla” she responded, and told me I could check out the ancient church and relax a bit.

I spent the next several hours hanging out on the open plaza of the monastary, admiring the striking view.  I resisted the urge to take a picture, having seen such pictures and knowing that they didn’t capture the grandeur of the place.  Meanwhile, volunteers and guests worked together to prepare lunch.  I was still completely beat and so slacked in this regard.  I didn’t really have much energy to chat either, but exchanged a few words with some of the Syrians.

Eventually, a couple of Frenchmen came by, and I was compelled enough by their story to engage more with them.  They were traveling from India in a tuk-tuk they purchased there.  I had gotten used to being told that mine was a crazy way to tour Syria, or the Middle East in general, but I think this takes the cake.  You can read more about their story here.

After a wonderful lunch of soup with toasted bread and salad, I had enough energy to help out with the dishes. I was then shown to my quarters, a medium-sized room in a newer adjacent building with three beds.  I took a nap for a bit and then decided to go get some massage cream out of the stuff I left on my bike to use on my knee.  So, I descended those 340 steps, got my little bag of toiletries, applied the cream (which did indeed work almost immediately), then returned back up those 340 steps.  In retrospect, I think those 680 steps did more to exacerbate the condition of my knee that the cream did to help it.  Once back at the monastary, I took a shower and headed back to the church for meditation time.

While the place is very ecumenical in nature, it was started by a Jesuit priest and the dominant denomination is Catholic, so upon entering, apparently a minute late, I felt the urge to cross myself and realized that I actually had no idea how to do so properly.  I’m sure in some parts of the world, how you cross yourself says a great deal about you.  I was slightly embarassed not to know even one way.  The ancient church was indeed beautiful, and this was enhanced by the candlelight.  The majority of the structure seemed not to have required much restoration, but the wooden roof was of course new.  The murals, depicting the apostles and a number of other scenes I didn’t have the background to analyze, were largely in wonderful condition, although the artistry from this early stage looked almost cartoonish.  This led me to think about cartoons, and the comic-book version of the Bible that was my introduction to Christianity some time ago, and the fact that, when it comes down to it, one of the things that unites almost all religions is their tendency to present major figures, whether human or divine, as characatures, even if there may be an injunction—as in Islam—against graphic depictions of these characatures.

On the floor before the altar was a small chalkboard flanked by candles with the readings of the day from the Bible, including passages from Ecclisiastes, I Corrinthians (I think), and Luke, dealing, respectively, with freedom and social justice, the distinction between dogma and moral self-restraint, and faith.  Behind the chalkboard were two books, each resting on its own rihal, the traditional seat for the Koran.  While I didn’t check to make certain, I gather that one was a Christian Bible and the other the Holy Quran.

The priest was away, but the most experienced of the monks led a prayer in Arabic, and the hour-long period of silent meditation began shortly thereafter.  I appreciated that there was a time set aside for such things, and spent much of my time meditating upon what it means to be agnostic, and in particular to be militantly agnostic (“I don’t know and neither do you”).  I found myself reciting the Lord’s Prayer, just to see if I could remember it, after having not thought about it in some 18 years.  There were a few words I forgot.  I also meditated upon the value of ritual and realized that for many years I had been neglecting the weekly and seasonal rituals that I had previously set aside for contemplation and celebration of a more spiritual life (in a very loose, agnostic, sense).  I resolved to make an attempt to bring some of that back into my life when I move to Washington, DC.  Syria has thus inspired me to bring two things back to the US from this part of the world: spirit and hospitality.

The evening sevice started after meditation, and we were handed Bibles in our native languages, if we didn’t already have them (Arabic, English, French and Bulgarian were represented here).  The sevice was mostly in Arabic, with one of the religious students of the monastary occasionally noting in English the chapter and verse being read.  In each case, I was too caught off-guard by the sudden English utterances, and the non-correspondence with the verses listed on the chalkboard, so I wasn’t following the service very well.  There were some readings from the Psalms, some discussion of a passage from the Gospel according to Luke and a period set aside for expression of personal prayers, most of which, from what I could understand, consisted of prayers for loved ones and for the continuing success of Deir Mar Musa in its mission promoting ecumenical relationships, social justice and sustainable land use.

A wonderful dinner followed, including most of the same food from lunch, with the addition of some cheeses, olives and mezza, along with some pleasant conversation, mostly with the French visitors and a volunteer who was also French.  Needing to get up before dawn, I excused myself and went to go turn in.  Between the monastary and the residential building, the view of the sky was amazing.  The Milky Way was clearly discernible, and I think I saw more stars at once than I ever had before.  I regretted not having the opportunity to spend more time looking at the sky.

I eventually stayed at a place called al-Khayyaam Hotel, which translates to something like “Camper’s Hotel”, which adequately describes the facilities, although the species of flora and fauna were a bit different than one might expect to find camping under the stars in the countryside.

I spent the remaining few hours of daylight wandering around Homs, stopping at sandwich shops and cafes.  Along the way, I walked past the foul place I mentioned in my last post, and noted the dishwasher’s professional attire:  a plastic garbage bag fashioned into an apron.  After this first sighting, I started to notice that it was a more general phenomenon, as the guys in the back all seemed to have the same black plastic apron, custom-made every shift.  At the sit-down sandwich shop, a few guys were hanging around the television, watching the game between Iraq and Spain, in which it was clear that everyone was disappointed in the Iraqi team’s performance.

I headed across the street, crossing the shady park (the one I had stopped in upon arriving into town) taking up the triangle between two streets converging at a sharp angle.  I walked toward a curious little stream of smoke coming out of a little smokestack and as I approached, realized that it was a small peanut roaster, about a foot-and-half cubed, mounted on the front of a small cargo bike.  The owner had attached a telescoping smokestack to keep the smoke out of the eyes of the passing patrons of the two high-end restaurants right nearby, as well as the general public, which seemed to use this thoroughfare as the place to be seen, preferably wearing the colors, if not the flag itself—or a cloak made out of the flag—of their favorite Syrian football club.  The latter was about to appear on television, helping to lift the spirits of those left disgruntled by the Iraq-Spain game.

I headed to what seemed to be the cafe to go to to people watch, with three rows of tables on the sidewalk, perpendicular to the long building, all with the chairs facing out toward the sidewalk.  I picked up a paper called “Tishreen” (a reference to the October 1973 war, October being “Tishreen” in the Levant), not finding any better options.  I had appreciated previous issues for their coverage of protests against the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank.  This one was disappointing, however, consisting mostly of government press releases about meetings of various officials.  I gather Syria’s short-lived experiment with an independent press had little effect on the media organs of the state, who were the only ones to make it out of that experiment, for reasons that had little to do with their economic viability.

I sat down at the cafe, refusing the persistent shoe-shiners who were more focused on my nationality than my canvas shoes, despite the fact that most of the people around me likely had more disposable income than me.  I sat against the wall of the building, looking out on the sidewalk and the other two rows of cafe patrons.  Just in front of me, furthest out into the sidewalk, was a man who looked vaguely hip, in that particularly Arab manner (I’m afraid I don’t pay enough attention to fashion to describe it to you in detail), and he had a very well-behaved and friendly white fluffy dog with him.  I think maybe it was a bichon frise.  Anyway, the little creature was the object of everyone’s attention.  Groups of teenage boys would come by and take pictures of one-another posing with the pup, with its owner seemingly content to be one step removed from the center of attention, if not completely absent altogether.

As the sun dimmed, the clock in the tower sitting in the middle of the adjacent traffic circle emitted an electronic Big Ben “chime”.  Sparrows circled above while pairs of urbane boys walked hand-in-hand and a continuous stream of blue and orange flowed past in the form of t-shirts, jerseys, cloaks and flags waved out of car windows, or even draped entirely over the roof and rear window of the car.  The cafe’s sidewalk crowd relocated to the inside seats, facing the small television as the players lined up for the national anthem.

In the meantime, I considered some local linguistic oddities.  On most non-Arabic maps and in publications, the name of the city is written as “Homs” or “Hums”, and yet I had met no Syrian who pronounced it this way (I have since met one—the English-speaking guide at the Tishreen Panorama in Damascus).  Everyone pronounces it “Homos,” not to be confused with “hommos,” which is of course the word for chick-peas.  Still, after Aleppo (pronounced “Haleb”, which is oddly similar to the word for milk), I was starting to wonder about the fact that the names of Syria’s second- and third-largest cities sounded like basic foodstuffs.  It also made me wonder what sort of linguistic influences resulted in the habit of Syrians to largely disregard the usual injunction in the Arabic language (which it shares with Spanish) against pronouncing the beginning of a word with two consecutive consonants with no intervening vowel (e.g., the utterly un-Arabic place name of Sqalbiya, and the habit of omitting the vowel of the common Arabic prefix “mu” or “ma”).  At the same time, while it is quite common in Arabic to end a word with two consecutive consonants with no intervening vowel, Syrians do not seem to like this convention, and will insert a vowel (e.g., Homos for Homs and “tahet” for “taht”–meaning “below” or “down”).</linguisticnote>

I returned to the campground—I mean hotel—and proceeded to have a somewhat lengthy discussion with a fellow patron on vacation.  He was from South Lebanon, and he liked to talk.  But, like all good talkers, he had the courtesy to start with a question.  He asked me how I found Syria.  I responded that I loved the place, and found the people to be some of the nicest I’ve met anywhere.  He seemed a bit surprised, repeating the mantra:  Syrians are a simple people.  He added some thoughts of his own to the standard:  the problem with the Syrian people, he said, was that they thought and acted from their hearts.  “We Lebanese have learned to kill our hearts and to think and act with our brains.”  He repeated this idea several times during the conversation, alluding to the way Lebanese, particularly those from the south of the country, have coped with repeated traumas, the violent deaths of their loved ones under Israeli bombardment.  “Why is it,” he asked, “that they kill our babies, but when we attack their soldiers, on our land, that we are the evil ones?  Where is the justice in that?”  Where, indeed.  He mentioned several times that he still loves Israeli people, that he respects them for loving and defending their country, but that he wishes that they would simply fight like men with honor, and leave a little something for those the Jews have shared the land of Israel with for centuries and millenia.  At that, he appologized profusely for talking so much (no need, I assured him) and bid farewell as he headed to the bus station to return home.

For myself, I went to my tent—I mean room—and changed my chainring and cog in preparation for the climb of the next day, especially the steep part up to the monastary of Deir Mar Musa al-Habasheya.

After several days in Hama hoping for Elaina to recover from her mysterious illness (which at this stage has been diagnosed as a kidney infection resulting from heat exhaustion), I’ve taken off on my own.  Elaina seems to be on the mend (yet still not ready to ride), and with enough experience in Syria under her drawstring to make do without me.  She’ll stay in Hama for another night before heading off to Damascus by bus (they use the word “pullman” here).  It’ll take me a couple days to get there.  I’m writing from Homs, the next big place with a hotel south of Hama, having ridden a mere 55km with few substantial hills to speak of.

June 17th

I started out pretty early, around 5:45am, and got the video (above) I’ve been meaning to record of the groaning noria (waterwheel) in the center of Hama, the sound of which rather reminds me of some droning unoriginal goth song, or a loop tape of a creaking door in a horror movie, or the soundtrack to Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher”.  I next stopped to get a sip of coffee from a street vendor out early.  Like so many others, he refused payment.

I took a bit of a long route out of town, first following the Orontes River, then arching out to the east before rejoining the main highway. This was unintentional, but it worked out well, allowing me to avoid the suburban expansion on Hama and head straight into the countryside. Most of the rest of the ride was along a calm frontage road, with only the occasional slow motorcycle or over-laden produce truck.

Along the way was this weird amusement park.  In the distance, in the second picture, you can see the large power plant that mostly dominated the landscape.

I got a bit confused around ar-Rastan, misdirected by hand-painted signs on the frontage road (presumably the old highway) indicating that the road was cut off at the tunnel ahead. I went back up the hill and got on the main highway, only to find the exit to the right blocked off. There was a gap in the barrier, so I went through, but came upon a military unit running down the road, which looked like it went the wrong way, anyway. I went back up the hill again and, after seeing a few motorcycles coming from the supposedly-cut-off road, just took the original road I had been on and found that the road wasn’t actually cut off at the underpass, it’s just that cars are not admitted onto the ar-Rastan dam. There is a small gap, though, big enough for pedestrians, bicycles and small motorcycles to pass.  There were a couple guards on the bridge with bayonets attached to the ends of the rifle, so I refrained from taking any pictures, as I know their sensitive about places like bridges and dams around these parts, nevermind that the guards were sleeping.  I did, however, previously snap this picture of the artificial lake behind the dam, with the power plant in the distance (double no-no).

After crossing the dam, I skirted the edge of the town of ar-Rastan and eventually came upon a bit of a gut-wrenching scene.  Up ahead of me, I saw a small group of people running frantically about—too frantically for this early hour.  A limp body was being lifted into the back seat of a car, and as I drew closer, I could see the broken motorcycle in the middle of the street and a young woman with a bleeding face and blood all down her front walking on the side of the road toward me.  I slowly cycled closer still and saw people standing around with blank stares in their eyes and their hands over their mouths.  As I rolled past, I saw the pool of blood on the pavement, the pair of sandles, a splayed notebook and a broken pencil.  I shuddered and wished I knew the proper words to say or the proper gestures to make at a time like this to convey that my concern and grief was with theirs.  The car overtook me a few blocks up the road and made for the front door of a local clinic/hospital.  About 10km later, for the first time in Syria, I saw a motorcyclist wearing a helmet.  I’m not dogmatic about helmets, but still, I wonder if he saw the accident, too.

Approaching Homs, I passed another government grainery, again with it’s line of tractors waiting to drop off wheat.  The traffic got predictably more chaotic in town, and I eventually reached the center of the city and took a break to get my bearings at a park.  It was still only 8:30, so I sat for a while on a park bench.  I was offered another little cup of coffee and talked for a bit with a local barber, who told me I could get a good bowl of foul just behind us.  I had a good cheap breakfast (US$1.30) of foul and yogurt, then circled around a bit before finding this internet cafe.  Next stop:  the monastary at Deir Mar Musa.

June 8th

It was hot and the traffic out of Lattakia was a pain, though the road was nearly flat for the first 25 km or so.  After that, it climbed sharply to the village of al-Haffeh, to the extent that I had to walk uphill for a couple kilometers and we both had to take an extended break in the shade of what appeared to be an unfinished arch.  We eventually reached the main part of town and had a sandwich at a local shop.  A bit up the road, at the intersection with the turnoff to the castle, we asked to leave most of our stuff at the corner store.  They were obliging and at 4pm we set off toward the castle with less weight in preparation for the insane climbing ahead.  The road was as incredibly steep—both up and down—as I had been led to believe, and I was forced to walk the majority of the uphill sections.  Between this and taking a couple calls from Adrienne, it took us 50 minutes to travel only 4km, leaving only an hour to see the place.  The first thing to greet the visitor at the top of this crazy hill is the immense pillar that had supported the drawbridge for this castle.  The engineering and sheer volume of labor accomplished by Byzantine and Crusader forces was genuinely astounding, and the ability of Salah ed-Din and his son’s forces to breach its incredible defenses was no less astounding.

We locked our bikes up at the bottom of the stairs to the castle and ascended to the ticket office.  The agent at the counter asked if Elaina was tired from the climb up the stairs, which made us both chuckle.  Aside from the fact that I was probably more worn out than she, the stairs had been refreshingly easy.

I spent the next hour trying to motivate myself to visit all the amazing little nooks and crannies of this place with precious little energy.  The various underground chambers and grand halls were lovely to be in, and the amazingly cool air of the immense cisterns was a real pleasure, but climbing around on the ramparts under the sun was pretty draining, despite the beautiful views.

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On our way out of the castle, the ticket agent assured us that we would be welcome to come back the next day to see more of the place without paying if we liked, and was keen to have us stay at a hotel on the other side of the gorge separating the castle from the town of al-Haffeh.  Lovely as the idea of stopping here to spend the night, I wasn’t prepared to spend the €35 for the privilege.  The knowledge that the castle was open the following day, however, once it dawned upon us, was irksome, considering we could have stayed another night in Lattakia rather than putting ourselves through these climbs in the middle of the day.  Leaving the castle, a couple kids staffing the table of toys at the bottom of the stairs wanted us to give them a ride to town.

We carried on, hoping to reach the town of Slunfeh by nightfall. It was only some 20km away, but involved at least 700m of climbing.  We found our stuff under the stairs of the corner store where we left it and put it back on the bikes.  We went on for a while, but stopped only a bit outside of al-Haffeh at one of the many rest-stop/restaurants on the road to inquire if there was a place to camp.  We were here surrounded by some lovely forested land and Elaina had seen a campground symbol a ways back, so we figured camping would be a real option.  The owner of the place was quite obliging, though I was apparently unable to communicate what we were looking for.  I in turn had difficulty understanding his dialect and his particular expressions, though I was able to pick out that he was offering his place (the open-air restaurant, that is) to stay.  I insisted that we could sleep out in the woods, but he would have none of it and insisted that we should take the couch and the bed while he slept in the store-room.  After a scorpion appeared in the restaurant, I was less inclined to press the issue.

In retrospect the situation was rather uncomfortable, and I wasn’t clear as the evening was unfolding, just how much we were going to be in the way.  Some family came by at one point, and though I couldn’t discern exactly, it seemed that they were rather shooed away in deference to us.

I woke up a bit before dawn as the owner’s son, who was on night duty, was heating up the coffee pots.  These sort of pots make use of hot embers (which are also used for narghile) dropped into a cylinder that runs vertically through the middle of the pot.  After accepting some coffee and a bit of a snack, I got up to change the chain-ring on my bike in anticipation of the even steeper climbs ahead to Slunfeh and the 1400m summit.  Elaina soon arose as well and we made haste to get on the road.  We tried to say goodbye to our host, but he was not to be awoken, despite several attempts by his son.

June 9th

The climbs were indeed difficult, but after passing through the sprawling suburbs of this ridge-top town, we eventually reached the main square by mid-morning and sat down for a small breakfast.  While it was still somewhat early, we still had some 350m of climbing ahead of us, a very long descent, a lengthy road across the Orontes Valley (called “al-Ghab” in this area), followed by another steep 400m climb from a lower (and hotter) elevation before we could hope to find another hotel.  Plus, I was still beat from the previous day’s riding.

Additionally, I figured that since Slunfeh was such a tourist destination, the hotels would likely take credit cards, so I would have less to worry about money-wise, as I had still been unable to withdraw money from the account that has money in it from any Syrian ATMs.  So, we resolved to spend the night in Slunfeh.  The “cheaper” hotel turned out to be anything but cheap, and not they nor anyone in Slunfeh would take cards, nor was there an ATM machine.  Additionally, none of the several internet cafes in town actually had internet.  Nevertheless, the resolution to stay had been made, and I was too worn out not to stay.  I managed to hide this fact sufficiently to be able to bargain down the price to a level that still made me wish we had just stayed at the €35 place two nights previous.

I spent the day sleeping and doing laundry in the tub, while Elaina also spent the day doing laundry and not using the internet.  In the evening, we went for a stroll in search of food and I then saw all the signs for furnished apartments for rent in the window of virtually every store (and all in Arabic).  I’m not sure if they were available for only one night, but that seemed to be the purpose, and would likely have been a much better and cheaper option.  Oh well, another wrong turn.  It seems passing through tourist areas requires a different set of navigational skills than we had at our disposal.

The guy at the restaurant we visited really wanted to sell us hamburgers, but we insisted on a shish tawook sandwich and some mana`eesh with a yogurt drink.  The food was decent, though I was not in a patient enough mood to easily tolerate the adjacent table of middle-aged Syrian dudes playing with their ridiculous and annoying ringtones as if they were 15 years old.  The price likewise made me grumble.

June 10th

I grumbled, too, when the alarm went off at 5am, but got up nevertheless.  We set out not too much later and I was pleased to discover that I was able to do most of the climb to the summit without walking.  It was quite hazy, so we couldn’t see out to the Mediterannean as we might have been able to at other times of the year, Al-Ghab was even less visible, even though it was only a few kilometers away.  From 1400m up, we could only discern the shapes of the fields and could barely make out the hills on the opposite side of the valley.  Between this and the fact that the sun was in our face, you’ll see no pictures of al-Ghab from here.  You’ll be able to find plenty on Google Earth, Flickr or Panoramio if you’re interested.  The views of the nearly sheer cliff all the way down to the valley floor are indeed striking.

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The seemingly-endless descent that followed reminded me of that from Mt. Pinos to Ohai in southern California.  Here I had the additional pleasure of the sweet smell of French Broom and a perfectly comfortable temperature and humidity.  We missed a turn I had planned about halfway down the mountain because Elaina, who was able to coast more comfortably and descend more confidently, and was therefor a bit ahead of me, didn’t recognize the turn as I had described it.  This is probably because it was a gravelly road at the intersection and wasn’t terribly recognizable as a turn.  It’s most likely better that we stayed on the main road anyway, as a long steep descent on poor pavement might have been torture.

In any case, this put us a fair distance south from where I was expecting, so I suggested that, instead of heading north toward the “dead cities” as initially planned, we could head south to Apamea and north from there to the dead cities along what I figured to be a more gradual climb.  We stopped near the bottom of the hill at a little spot where a woman was making mana`eesh in a tandour in the yard and had a couple loaves for breakfast.  It was hot and delicious and we probably paid more than the norm for four loaves at S£20 (US$0.43), not that I’m complaining at all, just to be clear.  We were of course invited for tea, several times, but we declined, explaining we wanted to avoid the heat.  Upon explaining that we had just come from Slunfeh, some seemed incredulous, remarking about how hard the descent must have been, apparently unaware of what it takes to ascend a 1400m mountain without the help of fossil fuels.  They also described the climate in Slunfeh as “cold”, and the change in temperature had certainly been remarkable as we descended the mountain.

The route through al-Ghab was delightful, as we rode next to canals and along what was likely once the main road through the valley, passing through a succession of villages.  One seemed to have a very active environmental-awareness campaign going on, with numerous reminders to keep the environment clean along the side of the road.

Since it was still early and shadows were still relatively long, we spent much of the time in the shade once we reached the main modern highway that skirts the eastern edge of the valley, with cliffs hanging above the road.  People, kids especially, were particularly eager to greet us on this road, which was a nice feeling.

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We soon reached the town of Qal`at Madiq, named after the nearby castle of the same name.  The town is the site of a government grainery, an immensely important facility in a country where the government is the only legitimate purchaser of grain.  It’s importance was evidenced by the several-kilometer-long queue of tractors waiting to unload their produce at the grainery. Unfortunately, we had to ride at a fairly slow speed in this area because the queue blocked many of the intersections to the east, where we needed to turn to reach the ruins of Apamea, and it wasn’t easy to discern where the roads were.

The ascent up to Apamea was short but steep, with lovely views of the castle, obviously still used as a home for a great many locals and a playground for as many swallows, circling and swooping above.  We reached the little ticket booth, where I discovered for the second time that having some facial hair compelled ticket agents to ask my age when I asked for a student discount.  The discount apparently only applies to those under 26.

After a little break with some cold water and a snack, we mounted up and rode the broken ancient path through the historic metropolis.  Having to pay so much attention to the path itself distracted me from examining the ruins around us, but we stopped often enough to take it all in.  It was, indeed a grand place, but I got the most out of riding in the ruts in the paving stones, worn by chariots millenia ago, imagining what it must have been like then.

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We exited from what most visitors would experience as the far end of the site, crossed a paved road and continued along the same line as the “Cardo”, the main road of Apamea.  It was a gravel path, and turned out to be not much of a shortcut, given the existence of a paved road not far away.  The road to al-Bara and the dead cities was a slow incline with gently rolling hills at first, but abruptly turned into a series of short, steep ascents and descents between neighboring hilltop communities.  It was in my legs, therefor, that I learned a lesson in the geography of how communities were formed in this area.  In most other places, I was accustomed to towns growing organically at the confluences of rivers and at the crossroads of the easiest routes between such places.  Here, a premium seemed to be placed not on easy access for wheeled vehicles and sources of running water, but on defensible positions and places from which to survey the terrain and receive warning of approaching danger, pointing to the history of conflict in the region, with local communities buttressed about by the territorial ambitions of competing dynasties, empires and religions.

I found myself cursing that history, mostly for purely selfish reasons, as I would have been suffering less on a road that wound its way through valleys and around steep hills, rather than over and between them.  The day wore relentlessly on as we passed from one perched town to the next, stopping occasionally to ask for water and resting in the shade of olive trees.  Under one such olive tree, a fellow on a motorcycle stopped by to chat, then came by again later with a couple popsicles.  Such persistent kindness and hospitality made it hard to stay in a bad mood about the terrain.  As the heat of the day descended, we took an extended break at a sandwich shop in the town of Hazzarine, a place that we will most likely remember for the tendencies of its kids to gawk endlessly at us and hang around watching us as if we were zoo animals.  The owner of the sandwich shop, Taha, invited us to his place for a while for tea and conversation, most of which revolved around money issues as he asked about how much people in the US earn and what the cost of living is like.  It was a bit difficult to convey that Elaina and I don’t live like most people in the US from our social class.

We said our goodbyes and made our way the short distance to Kafr Nabbul and beyond to al-Bara in search of the hotel Taha had mentioned.  The series of ups and downs continued and I stopped at the top of a hill in the midst of some conifers just before the turn to the ruins of ShinsHara.  There was a fellow in a nice galabeya and a late-model car on the side of the road, and he seemed to be preparing to make a picnic.  It was a lovely spot of sparse forest, so I couldn’t blame him.  He beckoned us over, but we politely declined while we discussed whether we should continue straight on to al-Bara or to take the scenic route past the ruins.  We had just decided to go straight to al-Bara when the gentleman came over to offer some water, which we declined, as we had some already and didn’t want to carry more.  He insisted, however, and we eventually accepted, then he insisted we join him at his picnic spot, and we eventually did after he insisted “only 10 minutes.”  He mentioned that he had “lunch” there every afternoon with a bunch of other guys, but no one else had shown up that day.  He asked about our plans and we mentioned getting to a hotel in al-Bara.  He responded that he didn’t know of a hotel in al-Bara and offered for us to stay with him, then he called his brother-in-law, a Fullbright scholar, to have him show us around the ruins.   Just then, a number of dignified middle-aged and older men showed up one after another in their galabeyas and nice vehicles.  A gas stove and numerous dishes of food were produced, along with a yogurt drink.  We learned that we were in a circle with some of Kafr Nabbul’s notables.  Our original host, for instance, was the president of the hospital.  Ahmed, the Fullbright student, about to depart to the US for his studies, arrived on his motorcycle and sat with us, though he didn’t eat.  He told us of our options: that we could stay with his family or find a hotel in Ma`arat an-Numan some 20km away.  Given the lateness of the hour, we said we would prefer to stay with him and his family.  He then suggested we could go visit the ruins of ShinsHara in his brother-in-law’s car.  Still feeling pretty worn out from the days of riding under the sun, we agreed to a ride through the hills.  The ruins were definitely striking, and it was difficult to imagine how they had been constructed without heavy machinery.  I pondered for a while the arrangement of interests and incentives that made it possible to combine and concentrate this much labor to engineer, cut and move these giant stones into these huge buildings, particularly the grand arches.  In our basic history lessons and in museums, we tend to get the stories related to the exploits of great rulers, great armies and great empires, but the details of how those exploits related to the exploitation of labor is rarely a part of the story.  “The culture of the ancients” is constructed as quaint relic of a bye-gone era or a glimpse into our own roots, but rarely is it analyzed as a process of social and material production and reproduction.

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The ruins’ status as a destination for western tourists was taken advantage of as a political billboard by someone who had spray-painted “USA + [star of David] = [swastika]” on quite a few of them.  It had been spray-painted over, but there were a couple that had been missed.

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We went back to the picnic site so that Ahmed could return the car, and we followed him as he rode to his family’s house on his motorcycle.  We were of course well taken care of here, and Ahmed and his brother Wael took us around their village to show us some sights.  We spent much of the next day with Ahmed and his brother showing us around the ruins, as we had awoken too late to miss the mid-day heat.   Ahmed’s brother-in-law had invited us to a back-yard kebab barbeque that lasted a bit too long into the afternoon for us to get to Hama as we had planned, so we stayed the evening, during which Ahmed took both Elaina and I on the back of his motorcycle to hang out once again at ShinsHara talking about language, culture and literature.  This was actually one of the highlights of my time in Syria, with its combination of intimacy, comradery and communal travel.  It was also wonderful to see the locals out enjoying the outdoors similarly, with married couples and pairs of boys on motorcycles (many of the latter joy-riding in the same way American kids of the same age do), despite the sandstorm that had blown in from Egypt.  We went for a ride around the forest of conifers planted with UN funding and stopped for a view of Kafr Nabbul from an adjacent hilltop.  On the way back to town we rolled past the picnic spot (which they refer to as “the mountain”) and were beckoned by the daily gathering of elders there.  After a little debate, we went back to join them briefly, in an encounter that we learned was rather uncomfortable for Ahmed owing to the presence in the group of a certain person of low morals and integrity.

Elaina and I had planned to turn in early to be able to get up early, but found ourselves wide awake, so we stayed up talking with Ahmed and—to a lesser extent—Wael.  Wael’s command of English is not so great, and Elaina stills knows only about 25 words in Arabic, so English was our default language.  Additionally, my command of colloquial Arabic is still poor, and Ahmed is loathe to translate in general, so Wael was left out of much of the conversation.  We again spoke about language and culture, and also about some of the practical realities of living in the US, as Ahmed would have to fend for himself at times without the assistance of his State Department handlers.  Especially for someone with Edward Said in his reading list, I was a bit surprised by Ahmed’s tendency to essentialize “western culture,” and I made some attempts to convey that not all Americans are privacy nuts, especially when it comes to private property.  I related to him the English axiom “good fences make good neighbors” and tried to communicate my contempt for it.  I think (or hope, at least) that living in Portland will give him some sense of the communalist tradition that also runs through American culture.

Elaina was not feeling well when we went to sleep, and was still in a bit of a bad way when the alarm went off at 5am, so we slept until 8:30am and said our goodbyes for a second time.  Ahmed escorted us to the turn to the next town (back through Hazzarine, as it turns out) and we made our way through more hilly terrain to al-Ghab.

June 12th

The main road made a turn at the village of Sfuhun, and then turned downhill for the descent into the valley.  I kept going straight at first, and then turned back to the intersection.  There, I asked a couple guys hanging out in the shade if I could share the shade with them while I changed my gear.  They answered me with the typical perplexed Syrian response, “wein?”  I don’t quite get it.  They never seem to ask “min wein?” (where are you from?) or “liwein?” (where are you going?), just “wein?” (where?), as if I’m supposed to read their minds.  I generally have to discern from their body language if they’re just being friendly and asking about me, or if they’re simply verklempt by my presence in their village and assume that I’m lost.  The latter was definitely the case here, and despite repeated attempts to communicate the idea in different ways that I just wanted a little shade to change my gear in, I eventually gave up and just rode to the next patch of shade, unpopulated by people who assume that just because I’m a western dude on a bike in a small village in Syria, I don’t know where I’m going.  I can’t claim that my Arabic is superb, but it nevertheless frustrates me that some people just don’t care to try to understand anything other than what they already assume to be true.

Just as I was about to finish changing my chainring and cog in preparation for the downhill ahead and kilometers of flatlands after that, a couple kids who had previously passed me on their motorbike came back again and tried to help with what any sensible person would assume to be mechanical problems.  I was perhaps a bit snappy in relating to him that his help was just getting in the way, with my mood colored by my previous interaction with the men who could think of nothing but to tell me repeatedly how to get to Hama.  The kids took off rather abruptly (while some younger ones continued to look on), and I felt bad.  They soon came back, however, before I had finished reloading the bike, offering cookies, and we had a bit of a conversation that I think made us all feel better, although I did once again have to disabuse someone of the notion that riding a bicycle downhill is really not very difficult at all, and is in fact usually the funnest part.

The brisk downhill was indeed quite fun, and we then rode south along that same highway that skirts the eastern edge of the Orontes valley.  It was later this time, though, so we weren’t able to enjoy the shade of the mountains.  People were as friendly as before, though, since it was a Friday, there were more of them, especially the kids, almost all of whom were swimming and playing in the canal that runs alongside the road.  It looked filthy to me, but who knows.  Nearly the entire ride to Qala`at Madiq was accompanied by the noises of loud engines pumping water out of the canal and the screams of kids excited either by our passage or playtime in the canal.

We stopped for an over-large and over-priced meal of barbequed chicken and mezza in the town of Sqalbiya, then looked for a park to rest in to digest and avoid the heat.  The park I had seen on the satellite turned out to be a private one that was closed, and all the trees seemed to be next to houses, which would require more social engagement than we were ready for.  We rode for quite some time before we stopped at a citrus grove to rest for a couple hours.  A short distance later, we caught sight of our first “noria,” the waterwheels on the Orontes river that once formed part of the vast irrigation schemes of the Orontes valley.  They seem to be kept operational primarily as a tourist attraction, and the local kids were taking advantage of the one here at Shizar, with the Citadel of Shizar in the background, to cool off on a Friday afternoon.

We eventually arrived in Hama, riding past kilometers of residential towers.  I had to wonder if these hadn’t been constructed after Hafez al-Azad’s forces in 1982 razed much of Hama in retaliation for an assassination and secession attempt on the part of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood.  After a series of wrong turns, we eventually got to the hotel downtown, crossing over a couple of the bridges and passing a number of norias along the way.  Just as we were dismounting, we were taken aback by a peloton of sports cyclists riding through the main square—certainly not what we expected.

There are two backpacker hotels next to one another here, and I went from one to the other to check out the prices.  The second lowered the price after I said they were cheaper next door, and have been comfortable with the accommodations at Hotel Riad in the past few days since then.  Elaina has not been feeling well, so we’re sticking around while she recovers.

In the meantime, I’ve done some sightseeing.  The first night, I walked around what little remains of the old city, surprised at how dead everything was a bit after midnight on a Friday night.  A couple families were out, and a few more groups of men in the cafes, but it was not nearly as lively as I had expected.  The creaking, groaning noria (ناعورية) in the center of town was particularly loud at this quiet hour, and even a bit creepy, an impression accentuated by the bats flitting about near the river (see video at the top of the next post).

[Show as slideshow]

The following day, I got a well-needed haircut and did another walk through the old city, though there was more going on now.  I visited an old Ottoman palace, Qasr Azem, that had been beautifully refurbished.  It was like what I had seen at the Citadel in Aleppo, but in a smaller, easier-to-take-in scale.  There were also a number of rooms with creepy dioramas (if that’s not a redundant statement) that qualified the place as a Museum of National Heritage.  I had planned to sit down at a cafe to read the day’s paper (there was a headline about more injuries at the weekly anti-Apartheid wall protests in Ni`lin and Bil`in in the West Bank), but found it as closed as the night previous.  So, I went in search of the Hama museum, walking through the barren part of town east of the river that I’m guessing had been the part razed in 1982.  There were mostly residential towers, a big hotel, a large police station and a large branch of the Ba`ath Party headquarters (as if the older one on the other side of the river weren’t enough), along with this poster warning you, Brother Citizen, against diverting electricity illegally.

The museum was interesting enough, but what I found most interesting was the display of the “tell”, the large mound upon which the Citadel had once rested (and which still bears its name).  It is the size of a mountain, but is entirely man-made, constructed of millenia of rubble from successive generations of buildings erected on top of the previous generation’s rubble.

I came back to the hotel for a while and then Elaina and I went for an early dinner at the restaurant that I had twice previously found closed.  They had only one kind of beer (Tuborg), but it was pretty decent.  While there, we caught sight of the peloton rolling through once again.  More remarkable, however, was the avian wildlife swarming above us.  The air was positively thick with swallows and pigeons, causing me to wonder if the locals eat them like they do in Egypt.

We went back to the hotel where I set about writing this missive, the end of which you have now, at last, reached.

The last several days have involved travel via a number of different modes of transportation.  As I noted in my last post, the folks at the Jisr ash-Shughur train station were kind enough to store our bikes for us so that we could ride the train to Damascus to meet up with Adrienne.  It was a bit strange to cover the distance we had taken three days to ride (admittedly with some significant scenic detours) in just a few hours.  We arrived in Damascus early in the morning the next day, after an uncomfortable night’s sleep on the train.  Still, we were in better shape than Adrienne, who had apparently required a little assistance getting to sleep the previous night and was still a bit groggy.  Early as it was, we had some difficulty finding some food, so we sat for a bit in a little park, where, just before we got up to leave, the sort of wingnut I’ve rarely encountered outside of Santa Cruz approached us and seemed very much to want to “help” us.  He was full of all sorts of praise for the European stock from which he had decided we all came.  Despite the fact that some poor Texan was waiting for him, and despite the fact the we clearly weren’t interested in his “help,” he carried on and decided we really needed to know what our names looked like in bad, blocky Arabic and Armenian calligraphy.  We eventually extricated ourselves from this self-professed philologist and headed to Mayssun’s house.

Most of our time was spent in the Old City, wandering around the souqs, looking for soap, clothing, household goods and gifts for friends.  Obama was speaking in Cairo, so everyone wanted to talk to us about Obama.  We were of course less than glowing.  We also spent an inordinate amount of time eating, almost all of it excellent, though I have to say that Aleppo has a bit of an edge on Damascus.  The architecture, as I mentioned previously, was amazing, and it wasn’t confined just to the Old City.  Damascus has clearly been sprawling for a while.  We scarcely left the Old City, except on Friday, when we went searching for some electronics in the high-tech part of town, mostly without success.  It was a bit strange as the place was mostly deserted because it was Friday and a stiff wind blew sand in our eyes the whole time.  The trip to Damascus was relaxing on the whole, and it was especially wonderful to spend some time with Adrienne since we won’t see each-other for about a month.

We left Damascus on Saturday afternoon after a quick trip to the Great Umayyid Mosque, which was quite an experience.  The place, built on the ruins of an old Roman temple to Jupiter, was immense, and many of the old Roman collumns were incorporated in its construction.  The artwork, much more representative than I generally expect from Islamic art, was amazing, and amazingly refurbished.  I wasn’t listening particularly closely, but the imam inside seemed to be preaching moderation, while a small group surrounded him in wrapt attention (yet his voice was broadcast via speakers all across the huge mosque).  As has been usual in Syria, Elaina and Adrienne had to don cloaks to cover their hair and arms before entering.

Rather than taking the train to Jisr ash-Shughur via Aleppo, as we had done in the other direction, we went through Lattakia, partly to see the part of the countryside and mountains between Homs and the Syrian coast, and also to see a different view of the Lattakia-Aleppo route than we would otherwise see.  The route through the mountains to the coast was pretty, but not spectacular, and the increasing humidity was more noticable than anything else.  It was sunset by the time we reached the coast.  In Lattakia, the train to Jisr ash-Shughur didn’t leave until the next morning, so we got our tickets and headed downtown after a long delay trying to convince a cab driver that we REALLY just wanted to walk the 2km to downtown, despite his decent price.  We eventually reached our intended hotel after a bit of a detour, but the old man informed us that there was no room.  Really, there were just no sheets, as the boarders had already left.  In any case, he phoned a fellow at a nearby hotel with more rooms, and he showed up to escort us to his hotel.  The price was a bit more than we wanted to pay at S£700, but we eventually agreed.

We left early the next morning to catch the train, leaving a bunch of our stuff in the hotel so we wouldn’t have to carry it over the hill.  The route through the mountains was pretty, though there had obviously been a lot of clear-cut logging and the land was scarred by the construction of the giant new roadway connecting Aleppo to the intermodal terminal in Lattakia.  Since the various European political machinations of the interwar period that handed Iskanderun/Alexandretta to Turkey, Aleppo has been deprived of its traditional and most sensible route to the Mediterannean, thus necessitating this concrete monstrosity.

When we arrived in Jisr ash-Shughur, the station master was there and recognized us, as did Tamer, the security guard.  They brought us to the storage room where our bikes were left and we started to pack up and fill up our water supplies.  I discovered that I had forgotten to bring my keys and my lock was locked to my bike.  Thankfully, it was only locked to the frame, so I was able to tie it down without getting in the way too much.  Various people kept giving us fruit for the trip: plums, apricots, kumkwats.  I felt a little bad taking off so abruptly, but I explained that we needed to get going because of the heat of the middle of the day.  It was already 10:00 or 10:30.

June 7th

The ride was all on the main highway, soon to be replaced by a giant super-highway more-or-less along the same route.  There were some lovely stretches of the road, but for the most part, it was one big construction site, with tons of lorries carrying rocks.  Drivers passed incredibly wrecklessly, making the ride even more nerve-wracking.  Luckily, the climb out of Jisr ash-Shughur was not as difficult as I had imagined, and it was only a total of 75km to Lattakia.  After braving the incredibly unsafe drivers just outside of Lattakia and the general chaos of the city itself, we reached the hotel, showered and napped.  We went out to eat and take care of boring things I won’t tell you about, but took note of the amazing sparkly fashion here, not unlike the hip youth of Cairo.

Next will be some bureacratic visa extension stuff, and hopefully a trip back over the mountains along a smaller, steeper hill that goes past the Salah ed-Din Castle.  Stay tuned!

If ever there were a place that deserved to have this as their motto, Syria would be it. In the three days Elaina and I spent bike touring between Aleppo and Jisr ash-Shughur, we were constantly offered to share tea, eat food and stay the night. Even at grocery stores, we found it difficult, if not impossible, to exchange money for food or drinks. The country has so far lived up to its reputation for incredible hospitality, and that in spades. While this almost overwhelming hospitality, in combination with some pretty significant mid-day heat, has slowed down our forward progress, we have been able to travel in comfort, with most of our needs in terms of food, water, hygiene and rest generously taken care of for us.

May31

We set out from Aleppo a bit late the first day, as I had neglected to set an alarm. It was about 8:30am when we left the place we were sleeping, and then we spent about 2 hours at the internet cafe. The weather was already starting to get pretty hot. We left town more-or-less following the river and the railroad tracks out of town, a path that took us past a long strip of stone-mason workshops, where we saw young guys covered from head to toe with stone dust, without wearing masks, leading us both to wonder how long they could go before silicosis took hold.

After passing the waste-treatment plant, we soon found ourselves out in the middle of open pastures, and we made our way over picturesque (you’ll have to take my word for it, as I took no pictures) rolling hills where the occassional taxi and tractor would compete for space on the narrow road. We took a little break under a water tower, then continued on through a village and across the major Aleppo-Damascus highway. The proper path then became much less obvious, and the path I had plotted on Google Earth seemed to have disappeared and we wound through agricultural fields on dirt tracks, turning down offers for water along the way. We eventually reached the railroad tracks that run between Aleppo and Lattakia and followed them for some distance along another dirt/gravel/straw track. At one point, a freight train rolled past and the engineer gestured out the window in such a way as to suggest, “what the hell are you doing here!?”. We reached an intersection at a grove of olive trees, where we took a rest under the shade for a bit until a guy on a motorcycle rolled by and invited us in an easy, welcoming, no-strings-attached kind of way to tea at his shack a little bit down the road.

We followed him to his spartan two-room tin-roofed shack and shared a thermos of hot sweet tea that he had prepared. I had some difficulty following his Arabic, particularly those very important but regionally-peculiar social niceties that smooth these sorts of interactions. We nevertheless had some interesting conversations about the beauty of the countryside, agricultural policy (the cigarettes he was smoking, though they were branded to look similar to Marlboros, were produced, like practically all major agricultural goods here, in Syria), and the tendency of Egyptians to take advantage of visitors. I was a bit surprised to find that it wasn’t just white tourists that Egyptians treat this way (that is, as a potential source of income), but that they take the same attitude with Arab visitors, tourists and workers alike. It is a gross generalization of course, but the contrast has been striking.

After the thermos was emptied, we declined his offers for food and insisted that we weren’t hungry and that we should carry on down the road, whereupon he gave us directions to a nearby asphalt road that would take us to the large nearby town of Idleb.

Carry on we did, climbing a bit of a hill up to the next village. Near the far end of the village, we decided to stop at a grocer to pick up some bread and a drink. The kid staffing the place was excited to practice some English and offered to get us some bread from his house, as the store didn’t sell any and there was no bakery in the village. We were unable to decline this kind offer. As he went to fetch some bread, `Abd as-Sitar, the fellow on the motorcycle, rolled by and scolded us for stopping to buy some food when we had just told him that we weren’t hungry. Thus insued a bit of a competition between the local crowd that had by now gathered at the little shop and `Abd as-Sitar over who would have the honor of welcoming these traveling American weirdo freaks into their homes. Having established a bit of a relationship with the latter, we attempted to settle accounts at the shop, where they charged a small amount for a drink and refused payment for the bread. `Abd as-Sitar later seemed perturbed that they had charged us for anything.

So, we followed `Abd as-Sitar to the next village, where he lives, as he rode his motorcycle about as far ahead as possible without us losing sight of him. Again, a marked contrast to my experience in Egypt, where such offers of hospitality are more likely to be accompanied by urgent tugging at the elbow and a heart-wrenching story about a sisters’ wedding or son’s illness before the sales pitch.

We parked our bikes and were shown the bathroom, introduced to `Abd as-Sitar’s wife Salwa and kids, and asked if we wanted to wash up. He insisted that I change into some pajamas and a jalabeya for comfort, then put a kufeya on my head for fun. He told me to go into the sitting room and announce “Salam wa`aleykum” as if I were a sheikh. I dutifully obeyed, to the delight of Salwa, who snapped a few pictures of me with her camera phone (at a somewhat uncomfortably close distance, I should add).

For the next several hours, we were presented with food, tea, coffee and numerous invitations to stay the night while waves of visitors came over to meet the distinguished guests. Eventually, we succombed to the invitations to stay. Elaina and Salwa hit it off grandly and she was given a tour of all the neighbors’ households, during which time she took the time to hone her pantomiming skills and bolster her tolerance for weak sweet tea.

I meanwhile struggled to carry on conversation with `Abd as-Sitar, his 17-year-old son and his mother, and eventually was invited to take a nap when they noticed my sinking energy level. I was awoken for dinner, and after that and some more pleasant conversation with the extended family and family friends, we turned in for bed.

We woke up somewhat early the next morning, whereupon we were presented with another meal and more tea and coffee. Our bikes, which `Abd as-Sitar and his son had kindly relocated to the garage the previous afternoon (as a precaution against thievery, which it was difficult for me to accept as a problem here), were brought out and we were given fresh water for all of our water vessels. A long, somewhat painful–and even tearful–parting ensued before we got on our way, with neighbors coming out to see us off.

June 1

Difficult as it was to leave such social warmth, I was also somewhat relieved to be alone and able to engross myself in something familiar–cycling and navigation.

We had already deviated substantially from the route I had previously planned, so we stayed on the main road and passed through the large town of Idleb as well as a number of smaller villages, most of whose boundaries were marked by triumphalist arches across the main road, declaring “Yes to Bashar” and glorifying Syria’s armed forces and the Arab struggle. Staying on the main road made navigation easier, but I did have to stop once and look at a map, and ask directions once in Idleb. Along the way, we of course were the subject of plenty of prolonged gazes, but people were incredibly polite and friendly wherever we rolled through, and I never experienced the pointing, laughing and jeering that I came to expect most places I cycled in Egypt. In fact, every passing day in Syria has made Egypt seem worse and caused me to rue the time I spent there when I could have been in Syria.

In any case, after Idleb, we passed over a series of hills and took a detour to the north, following the signs pointing to Harem and the microbuses taking people to Salqin. This route took us through a narrow valley that initially showed us impressive rock cliffs on the right, before the valley widened out a bit. We had a lunch of cheap sandwiches and sodas in the town of Armanaaz, passing olive presses, pottery workshops and glassworks on the way. After Armanaaz, I turned my wheel around to get into an easier gear for the upcoming climb to Kafr Takharin and Salqin. The latter was pretty difficult, especially as the heat of the day wore on, and we eventually resolved to spend the rest of the hot hours resting beneath the branches of a fig tree adjacent to an olive grove.

Just as Elaina was starting to settle in with her sleeping pad, Muhammad, the owner of the property across the street, approached and insisted that we follow him to his place to rest a bit. Elaina went straight to sleep, but I felt obliged to stay awake a bit to engage in the social niceties. I spoke for some time with Muhammad about the usual subjects: work and family, but his farm provided more interesting (and tastier) material. He works as an accountant, but he is also an agriculturalist, and raises various fruit trees on his property, among them lemons, grapefruit, walnuts, kumkwats, apricots and a type of fruit common here, the name of which I seem incapable of remembering. It’s often served with cherries and is about the same shape, though it’s larger and green, with the texture of an apple and quite tart. Of course, he also grows olives. He gave us samples of most of these fruits, and his olive oil, as well, which he pressed himself. In addition to his speech, which was easy for me to understand, as well as his ownership of some prime real estate near the top of a hill looking out toward Turkey, the fact that he pressed his own oil was a marker of his social class. Most people out this way, though they have olive trees and cure their own olives, have them pressed at a central community press in one of the larger towns or cities.

I had originally written a bit more than once again as much as you’ve just read, but my little electronic typing device decided to crash and take all of that with it. I don’t have the time or energy to rewrite all that, so I’ll switch gears and do a bit of summarization.

To continue with the overriding theme of these few days, I found it interesting to note the similarities and differences between all the “random acts of kindness” we experienced. There was the extremely warm hospitality of the `Abd as-Sitar family from the agricultural hinterlands, the easy hospitality and more refined discourse of an upper-middle-class white-collar worker, fulfilling his agrarian dreams in the mountains. There was the persistent hospitality of the shopkeeper in Darkush who repeatedly refused our money and, when asked if there were a hotel in town, responded, “our house is your hotel.” His customer, Ahmed Hilal, amplified that sentiment and we experienced the uncomfortable hospitality of a family clearly coping with some internal strife, with a breadwinner trying to support two families (and two wives) on the income of a microbus driver, selling off the 14-year-old hair-dressing daughter to an unknown Qatari for marriage, the kids constantly hitting one-another and the father playing favorites with his youngest, 4-year-old son, allowing him to puff on his cigarettes and throw the butts in the adjacent river (particularly galling in Darkush, arguably the most scenic part of the Orontes River).

We also fell under the hospitality of a Catholic tractor driver who gave us a ride up a steep hill after I inquired about the existence of a shortcut around it. He and his brothers were mostly busy at work in the tractor shop, but nevertheless made time out to welcome us for tea and to share their pride in their Catholic community of Qanayah. It was their hospitality that put us in closer contact with a group of people we would never have had anything to do with in the US, even as traveling weirdo-freaks. The hospitality of the workers in the Jisr ash-Shughur train station was perhaps most telling, as they immediately invited us to drink water and soda, smoke shisha and take a nap on their mat before any mention of trains, schedules or tickets was made. The staff at the San Jose Amtrak station could stand to take a few tips from these folks. They were even kind enough to allow us to leave our bikes in the station while we went to Damascus to visit with Adrienne.

I’ve spoken in my previous post about the hospitality of the Couch Surfing(tm) crowd in Aleppo, but it bears repeating, as during our layover in Aleppo, our host Jameel, who appears everywhere somehow, saw us on our way back to the train station and took time out from his various other social obligations to say hi/bye.

June2

While the kindness of the people was the highlight of our trip so far, the non-human environment we traveled through was no less striking, with clean air everywhere, even (relatively speaking) in the cities. Vibrant, small-scale organic agriculture was the norm everywhere we went and unlike in so many other places, it seemed entirely congruent with non-agricultural open space. The empty road out of Darkush along the Orontes River was particularly beautiful. In Damascus, the architecture of the Old City is amazing, with narrow alleys (assiduously cleaned by public workers), encroached upon by buildings leaning into the lanes under sagging ancient timbers.

In general, my stay in Damascus has been good for getting me out of the mindset of a tourist (the shopping trips notwithstanding), owing to the political activism of our host, Mayssun. The conversations have given me the impetus to do something more with what I learn in Syria. I’m still not sure what I will have learned here, but I know that I’m not content with the standard liberal project of simply telling stories to contradict prevailing American preconceptions of the Arab world as a burgeoning population of hysterical, anti-American (people) savages. I’m fairly certain my blog isn’t being read by the people who need to hear that message, and I’m not interested in “speaking truth to power.” As Adrienne is keen to point out, “power doesn’t give a shit about truth,” it cares about power and maintaining it. I think my project here will only become clear in retrospect.

Getting through immigration and customs was remarkably easy, and the immigration officer gently encouraged me to practice my Arabic in response to his questions.

The hard part came in trying to get money. The ATM machines weren’t accepting our cards (American and Egyptian, both) and the currency exchange windows were all closed. The taxi drivers outside wanted US$10 to get downtown, which sounded exhorbidant to me. Elaina’s Brandt guide book indicated that this was the standard rate, so we took a cab to the famous Baron Hotel to exchange money. The rate was horrible, but we didn’t have much option. The driver then called our Couch Surfing ™ host and we drove off somewhere else and parked for a while near the “Great Umayyid Mosque”, waiting for “Jameel”. He arrived and, seeing our large boxes, got in the car and had the driver drive closer to our destination along narrow cobblestone streets, lined with beautiful old buildings.

We found ourselves at a store in the gateway to an old khan (which Jameel referred to as a karavanserai, thinking that the Farsi word would somehow be more familiar to us). Jameel introduced us to “Adam”, also known as Moustafa, the owner of the khan.

We went with Jameel and Adam and a gaggle of other Couch Surfers ™ to the rooftop restaurant above the afore-mentioned Baron Hotel, where we ate a wonderful selection of Aleppan food, while some drank `Arak, others drank whiskey and a couple of us had beer. Occasional bursts of excitement would echo from the street below and rise up to the restaurant from the match between Barcelona and Manchester being shown on a small screen in a cafe.

Beside me sat a Syrian fellow who went by the name `Abad (short for `Abd al-Latif). He spoke decent English, but with an insufferable faux-cockney accent (which he seemed to think represented “the Queen’s English”), whereby he willy-nilly transformed every other consonant into a glottal stop. He drank glass after glass of `Arak and regaled us with bad, sing-songy love-poetry. We learned later that he is no more sufferable when sober.

At some point in the evening, Elaina noted that the only women occupying the entire rooftop were in our party. I’m not sure of Adam’s age, but I’m quite sure that any age competition in the group would be fought between he and I. It was a very odd scene. I’m even tempted to call it “exotic”…as in “non-native invasive.”

It’s not often that I find myself following other people around in an unfamiliar environment, and this sense of disorientation added to the feeling of alienation.

The next day, we headed to the khan and I assembled my bicycle while an intimidatingly-large bee-like creature buzzed around the awning above me. A fellow named Muthana came by to open Adam’s shop and told us the story of how his family’s origins were kept a secret, even from younger generations, and how his father gave him such a strange non-sense name. From it’s similarity to the Arabic word for “feminine”, I wonder if it sounds femmy to locals, too, and if it’s sort of like Johnny Cash’s “Boy Named Sue.”

Jameel also eventually came by, as did `Abad, and we all shared a wonderful “breakfast” of Syrian foul (which beats the sloppy over-cooked Egyptian variety, I can assure you), served with hot-ish peppers.  After another several hours spent chatting casually over stimulant drinks (an activity that has taken up much of our time here), Jameel escorted me upstairs to a place to exchange money. The rate was fair and I was served tea to boot.

Elaina and I then took an independent trip to the citadel, a castle perched upon a hill, surrounded by a mote. The place was pretty incredible, in terms of architecture, military design, and scale. After just a few minutes, it, combined with everything I’d seen and experienced up to that point, led me to exclaim, “Aleppo is kinda just like Cairo, but everything is better.” Up a series of narrow and convoluted passageways was the throne chamber, which had been restored sometime recently and was one of the most gorgeous examples of Ottoman architecture I’ve seen. We wandered around for a bit longer, and went down into the cistern that had been converted into a dungeon, where I was trapped for some time waiting for a seemingly endless stream of rollicking local teenagers to wind their way down the tight rock-hewn staircase. We came upon a sibeel dispensing water in a little tree-shaded courtyard outside of a small mosque and had a few drinks. Another group of teenagers (or perhaps it was the same one—that dungeon was dark) came through and engaged us in a sort of conversation. One fellow, a student at a nearby technical college, asked me about the quality of American’s teeth. I responded that, pretty much like anywhere, it depends on social class.

We wandered around a bit more, climbed the tower for some sweeping views of the city and I took some interest in this old winch.

Our next goal was to get some of the famous Aleppan olive oil & laurel soap. We wandered around for a while, bought some cookies (here called either biskueet or miskueet), and were intercepted by Jameel while browsing the succession of soap-sellers. He told us he would take us to the factory to get a better price, then continued on his way.

Later on, we met up with Jameel at the khan and he took us to tour the mosque next-door. It had some wonderful domed architecture without pillars that made for some great acoustics, along with some somewhat jarring digital displays of the prayer times. Jameel passed us over to the mosque’s welcomer and tour guide. His English was pretty good (one of several people we’ve met studying English literature), and he was indulging with my Arabic, though he had that habit of the devout of correcting my Egyptian pronunciation. He took us to the roof and helped us ascend on the smaller domes for a view of the city, then explained the architecture and generally made pleasant conversation. We went out back to the roof to photograph the sunset as the call to prayer started. The welcomer/guide then took us to another building, where the muezzin was performing the idhan (call to prayer). We all sat for some time in this room, chatting some, but with some extended periods of awkward silence, during which I generally preoccupied myself by admiring the damask fabric draped from the ceiling. We were given a few words of friendly advice about reading the Quran, particularly in regards to the study of Arabic, but he was not particularly pushy. After some time, I started to wonder what we were doing there, and if we were waiting for something or someone. Jameel eventually emerged and settled that quandary.

The evening was spent walking to the New City with Jameel’s friend and fellow Couch Surfing ™ host , Muhammed, who spoke fairly good English (another English literature student, though he admits he hates the literature of the English), but very quickly, and with a bit of a staccato rythm. Jameel passed us off to Muhammed at some pre-arranged landmark and we walked for some distance to a falafel joint called Falafiloo. It was like the foul & ta`maya joints in Cairo where you order, then eat your sandwich standing up around a table. Here, though, the table was mostly covered with various raw vegetables to eat along with the sandwich: peppers, cucumbers, arugala (I think), radishes and some tahini dressing.

I found that Muhammed’s speech in Arabic had the same pace and rythm, and I had a hard time following him.
He took us to a large, well-lit mobile-phone shop, where I went through a process more involved than getting food stamps in the US in order to get a SIM card. I had to show my passport, give a local address, sign and seal the deal with a thumb print.

We then headed to get some ice cream, taking a detour to the train station to use the restrooms. I was pleased to find that my ATM card was working at the machine there–yet another reason to travel by train rather than airplane (or bike even better, though I haven’t come across a bike station with an ATM machine, working or not).

Along the way between the train station and the ice cream shop, in addition to meeting back up with Jameel, we passed the fence separating the street from a nearby park, decorated, for some reason, with Disney cartoon characters by the Aleppo Parks Council. On the street, there were advertizements for La Vache Qui Rit processed cheese, and I exclaimed, “Look, it’s President Mubarak in Syria!” Muhammed explained that the more common local epithet is “son of a belly dancer.” I prefer the laughing cow, personally. I guess I’m more willing to insult the feelings of a cartoon cow than those of an entire profession.

The ice cream was cheap and delicious, and the system not unlike the chaos of the el-`Abd sweet-shop chain in Cairo. We crossed the street to go hang out in the park, where we drank tea and smoked shisha. We American and Polish tourists were introduced to the practice of lightly slapping the hand of the person handing you the shisha mouthpiece as they pass it on. Elaina and I weren’t sure if they were just making of fun of us because I had slapped her hand to kill a mosquito just prior to this. We discussed a few other cultural niceties, like the habit of teenage Arab boys to walk down the street arm in arm or hand in hand listening to the latest hits on their cell phones.

The following day was Friday, and as we had been told, the Old City was empty and calm, with maybe one or two shops open. Elaina and I went on a search for coffee and a restroom and eventually went to a place next to the Great Mosque (which was at that moment emptying itself of a couple tour bus-loads of Westerners). We paid entirely too much for two demi-tasses of Turkish coffee and a bowl of foul (which was admittedly quite good). Later on, I spent some time writing while the Couch Surfing ™ crowd lounged about the khan and another shop I didn’t visit.

Finally, around 4pm, we headed off to the microbus station just outside the Old City to take a trip to San Simeon’s Citadel. I was a bit ambivalent about this trip, being somewhat anxious to get on the road (not in a microbus) and take care of some necessities. I was persuaded, however.

We quickly caught a microbus to the town of Daret `Ezzah and then transferred to the back of a truck for the rest of the trip, making a quick stop in between to get some french fries and a sandwich of spicy chicken drippings, french fries & mayonnaise. Delicious!

The Poles, Nicolas and Magda, seemed to find the experience of riding in the back of a pickup much mre novel and exciting than I, as they sat up above the cab while Jameel took pictures. St. Simeon, like the Citadel the day before, had a wide discrepancy between the price for students and Syrians and that for foreigners (S£10 versus S£150), and I was grateful that they found my AUC student ID acceptable (even in Egypt, this is seldom the case).

The place, the ruins of a Byzantine basilica erected around the spot where St. Simeon spent 40 years perched utop a pillar, was interesting enough, and Jameel gave a lovely tour (he is studying archeology). Chahinda, on our tours of Pharaonic Egyptian ruins, had often made a point to draw attention to the ways in which many of the architectural features of Pharaonic temples were adopted in Christian ones, and it was interesting to see that here.

The most interesting part of the trip occurred outside of the fee area. After we left St. Simeon’s, we walked down the hill to a very small home bakery, where Jameel showed us the stone oven (called a tanour) where a woman was baking what I believe was called “mana`eesh filfil.” It was a flat bread, covered with a mixture of olive oil, chopped hot peppers, sesame seeds and cumin seeds, then slapped on the round inner wall of the oven to bake. Superb!

It was nevertheless a bit of an odd experience. Jameel had first taken us to a tiny little roadside stand to drink Syrian soda (forgot the name), and then we followed him past a circle of men smoking shisha, and then scrambled over a short wall–trying to avoid trampling the plants–into what seemed like a private yard, with the tanour built into the outside wall of the house. The woman was there making the bread, and we weren’t introduced, while children walked and sat around doing entirely practical things, taking only a mild interest in our presence in their yard. The circle of men outside seemed more perturbed by the situation than anyone else, and if they were offended, it wasn’t entirely evident to me.

We then hitchhiked a short distance down the road to another turnoff toward the village of Qaturah, then walked for a ways up this side road. We eventually caught a ride in the back of a small vehicle whose name I’ve forgotten. It’s sort of like a tuktuk in terms of the power of its engine (maybe a bit stronger), though it is less muffled and has a flat bed rather than a covered area on which to carry cargo and passengers. We ended up at the burial tomb of the Roman chronicler (?) Titus and his family, hewn into the rocky terrain. A microbus filled with two families arrived around the same time, followed by a substantial herd of sneezing, bleeting goats that congregated around the well just in front of the tomb. A wonderful cross-species inter-cultural exchange ensued, documented in detail by cell phones, digital cameras, and now yours truly.

After some time of mingling, Ahmed `Akl (pronounced “`Agal”), a guard at St. Simeon and an acquaintance of Jameel’s, arrived on the scene and invited the whole lot (goats excepted) to dinner at his farm back down the road a short ways. The Syrian families declined, but the rest of us obliged. Magda was mounted upon one of Abu Kadus’s (I believe that was his honorific) five horses while Jameel repeatedly pretended to whip the creature into a gallop with a piece of vinyl tubing found on the road. Elaina was next, and found this draft animal unresponsive to the commands common for a Santa Cruz thoroughbred. It seemed more interested in wading into a patch of thistles to snack than anything Elaina might want.

We sat for a while under a fig tree drinking tea, brought by his son, then wandered about his vegetable patches, separated by low stone walls. We eventually retired to a small room attached to the main part of the house, which seemed usually to serve as the entertainment room, complete with television. I was a bit surprised to find Syrian television acting even worse than its Egyptian counterpart, and the volume of its commercials even higher in relation to the main programming (although commercial breaks were thankfully less frequent). Mr. Akl proceeded to call a number of his friends who were keen to practice their English and foist them upon his guests.

A meal was presented of oily, salty eggs and processed meat, salad, yoghurt, two types of olives from his farm and olive oil from those olives, pressed at a nearby press. After dinner came a dessert of orange popsicles, and one of the sons took the opportunity to produce a deadly (and dead) snake he found in the field outside. Mr. Akl went to some length to explain that he is regularly forced to kill these snakes because they can kill a man, or at least cause his arm or leg to be amputated. He then turned to me and asked me why it was that tourists wince and try to convince him that he should allow such deadly creatures to live. I tried to explain that most tourists experience nature as the good, healthy part of food and hygiene goods, not as a potential danger, and even among most Westerners who are not quite so alienated from nature, snakes from their region are not generally so dangerous.

Several rounds of tea were then brought out, and the channel turned to Al-Jazeera, which was a treat for me. We don’t have cable at home and most of my attempts to watch on the internet are too frustrating to be worthwhile. Meanwhile, the kids tried to teach Arabic to Nicolas, Jameel coached Elaina with Arabic letters, and Abu Kadus brought out his collection of photographs that most of us struggled to maintain an interest in.

We set out somewhat abruptly at Jameel’s urging, said our goodbyes and caught a ride in the back of a track, shared with a couple barrels of diesel fuel from the road to Qaturah to a gas station at the near end of Daret E`zzah. We then walked across town to the opposite side of the town and attempted to catch a microbus. Seeing as we are all light-skinned, and all the microbuses were otherwise empty, they all wanted to charge us for a private trip, which would cost much more. After many attempts, including one which sent us half a kilometer down the road before the disagreement around prices became evident and we turned back around, Jameel finally bargained a microbus driver down to S£400 for the five of us.

More to come, but there’s some photos here

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