Travelogue: Suria wa Urdun

Day 10 – On the road to Damascus

We arrived in Aleppo, Syria, this morning at about 1:20 AM. It feels very strange to be in this country – a country that Ambassador John Bolton once called “the junior league axis of evil,” a country designated by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, a country that’s been under heavy US sanctions since 2003, a country that US special forces invaded to kill an al Qaeda operative two weeks ago. Our guide, Nadim, promises that we will be welcomed by the Syrians, but how can there not be at least a little tension? How many Americans do they run across in the average year here? Will my friends and I be their first encounter with the far-off enemy?

The sight from the plane as we descended was quite weird. Aleppo is a big city (4.2 million), but the lights on the ground were dim and sparsely scattered. We ain’t in Turkey anymore.

First sight on the ground: five men in laborers’ clothing standing together inside the jetway, not doing much at all. At 1:20 AM. Unemployment in Syria is nearly 20%. 25% of the labor force is on the government payroll (which includes airlines) and is paid next to nothing.

Second sight: A gigantic portrait of His Excellency, President-for-Life Bashar Assad. The first, but certainly not the last. Pictures of Bashar and his father Hafiz are even more numerous than the pictures of Ataturk in Turkey. Of course, Ataturk actually did something for his country. Hafiz’ biggest accomplishment was occupying Lebanon. Bashar’s was getting kicked out of Lebanon.

You gotta feel for Bashar. He had a great career going as an ophthalmologist in London. Then his older brother goes and gets killed in a car wreck, so his dad makes him come home and join the army so he can succeed him as president. Six years later, his dad croaks, and Bashar finds himself in charge of the most pitiful rogue state on the planet. All he wanted was to help kids see better.

(Flashes back to 2006 Hezbollah war.)

Never mind. I don’t feel for him at all.

We had our first major hitch at the passport line. The military officers there (all six of them – again, at 1:20 AM) carefully examined all our passports. Problem: a careful examination of one of our number’s passport revealed that he/she had once crossed the Israeli border into Egypt. That makes him/her unwelcome in Syria. They briefly took him/her into a back room for questioning – yikes – and apparently didn’t like the answers. His/her backup plan had been to fly to Jordan from Aleppo and then meet us there, but they wouldn’t even let him/her do that – he/she had to buy a ticket back to Istanbul. He/she was deported from Syria. We all gathered around him/her and prayed for his/her safety, and then he/she left. We’ll meet up with him/her again in Jordan.

The incident was another testament to the awesomeness that is Dr. Diaa. When one of the Syrian officials said, “They are the enemy!” (referring to Israel), Diaa exclaimed, “‘The Enemy’ doesn’t have any problems with Syrian stamps on our passports! What is your problem?” Amin.

To top everything off, the airport personnel made us run all of our carry-on luggage through x-ray machines again before letting us go. I wish I knew enough Arabic to say, “The point is to keep weapons off of planes, you power-tripping overemployed national socialist cogs!” But I don’t.

Syria is a lot like Egypt, and nothing like Turkey. The sand, the half-built buildings, the boxy mosque design (as opposed to the domed Ottoman model), the men in jalabayas, and of course, the Arabic. It’s all like coming home. We checked into the “Hotel Tourist” at 3 AM, which was quite a few steps down from the posh resorts we stayed at in Turkey, but comfortable enough for our purposes: crashing for six hours before our trip the next day. The hotel lobby prominently displayed a photo of Bashar Assad, a painting of Jesus, and a weaving from Guatemala. Almost 10% of Syria is Christian according to the State Department, and Christians are as free as everyone else – which is to say, free to prominently display pictures of the Dear Leader, and not much else.

In the morning, we woke up, used the community bathroom, ate a meager continental breakfast, watched Brian talk in Spanish to some tourists from Spain, loaded up the bus, and set off towards the Krak des Chevaliers, a Crusader castle near Homs, Syria, built in the twelfth century.

The part of Syria we drove through was much flatter and drier than Western Turkey, but greener than Egypt – there are lots of orchards and fields along the way. 32% of Syrian land is arable, and agriculture accounts for 25% of Syria’s GDP. (You can thank the US State Department’s website for all these fun facts.)

On the way to the Krak, we passed through a rather large city. Dr. Holt informed us that it was Hama, population 1.2 million. You wouldn’t know by looking at it that 26 years ago, Hafiz Assad leveled the city in response to an Islamist uprising there, killing 20,000 people. It’s still one of Syria’s most conservative cities.

Also on the way, we stopped at a rest stop/resort called Amanos, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It had a restaurant, fountains and a Ferris wheel. Kind of random, but fun to see.

The Krak des Chevaliers is situated in a gap in Syria’s coastal mountain range. T. E. Lawrence once called it “the finest castle in the world.” I won’t disagree. It’s the real deal – towers, walls, turrets. From the highest tower you can see the whole “Christian valley” – a lush Christian-dominated valley surrounding the Krak – and mountains in nearby Lebanon. I took lots of pictures there.

Afterwards, we had our first taste of Syrian food at a nearby restaurant. It was unreal – fried cauliflower, fried eggplant, grilled chicken with lemon-garlic sauce, and a waiter who laid the metrosexual schtick on thick. Go figure.

Finally, we completed the bus ride to Damascus, Syria’s capital and the oldest continually inhabited city on earth. We arrived after dark and moved into our rooms at the St. Elias Monastery, a few quick blocks from Damascus’ Old City. St. Elias Monastery is a Syrian Orthodox monastery, whose office lobby displays a painting of Jesus next to a portrait of Bashar. The contradictions that come with being a Syrian Christian. I don’t envy them.

After we checked in, we walked to the Old City, along Straight Street (see Acts 9) to the covered souk (market). We found a great ice cream shop, which served massive scoops of ice cream on cones for only 50 Syrian pounds. (About one US dollar – Syria, we would quickly learn, is one of the cheapest places on earth.) But I was still getting used to seeing Bashar Assad’s face everywhere, when, in the ice cream shop, I was confronted by something new: a poster of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the butcher in charge of the Syrian and Iranian-sponsored Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah (“party of God”), on the wall behind the serving counter. Hezbollah propaganda, too, would become a theme of our visit to Damascus. Lord, give me strength. (I’ve dedicated an album to Syrian propaganda over at Picasa. There’s some truly hilarious/sad stuff there.)

Weirdly, that night, the Syrian government aired confessions on TV from the men accused of setting off a car bomb in Damascus that killed 17 people back in September, when I was still in Cairo. Forced? Probably. True? Maybe. An interesting introduction to Syria.

On a sidenote, Al Jazeera English is a great station. Arabic Al Jazeera might be crazy and out there, but Al Jazeera English is very informative, and reasonably neutral. I watched it a lot with Josh, my roommate in Damascus. I was surprised to see that a British guy named Sir David Frost has his own show on Al Jazeera. “What’s a British guy doing there?” I wondered. Later, I realized that this same David Frost is the man who interviewed Nixon for a million dollars after his resignation. The interview is now the subject of the new movie Frost/Nixon. From criminal presidents to Middle Eastern TV. Interesting guy.

Day 11

Today, our guide Nadim took us to the house of St. Ananias, the man who God sent to heal the Apostle Paul of his blindness in Acts 9. (Paul himself was staying on Straight Street, which we walked on every day to the markets in the Old City.) Because the house is 2000 years old, and Damascus has seen a lot since then, it’s located about twelve feet below street level, at the level where the street was in Roman times. So the house today is an underground stone-walled chapel. According to Eastern Orthodox tradition, Ananias was one of the seventy-two disciples sent out by Jesus in Luke 10, and later became the Bishop of Damascus. He was eventually killed by the Romans.

Damascus’ Old City is a beautiful place. Its narrow cobblestone streets are lined with Roman ruins, palm trees, grape vines, restaurants, and shops selling Christian and Muslim artwork. At the heart of the Old City is the Umayyad Mosque, where Nadim took us after we visited Ananias’ house. The mosque’s huge walls and towering minarets serve as a kind of landmark for us Americans trying to navigate Damascus: “Should we go back to that one place we were at earlier?” “Sure. Which way is the mosque?”

Aesthetically and historically, the Umayyad Mosque is my favorite mosque. (I’ve been to a few now.) The Umayyad caliphs moved the capital of the Islamic empire to Damascus, and built the mosque over the Byzantine Basilica of St. John, which in turn was built on the ruins of the Roman temple of Jupiter. The eastern gate of the Roman temple is now the entrance to a huge covered market, and other Roman ruins can still be seen inside the mosque’s courtyard. The Basilica of St. John was dedicated to St. John the Baptist. John the Baptist is also revered as a prophet by the Muslims, and the main hall of the mosque holds a shrine that contains his severed head. (Of course, his head is also in the Sultan’s palace in Istanbul, so...)

The Umayyad mosque has more than its fair share of dead famous people. When the Umayyads beheaded Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet Mohammad, for trying to take back the caliphate for his family, they displayed his head and the heads of his followers at the mosque. The place where the heads were displayed (I think they’re buried somewhere else now) is now a shrine for Shia Muslims, who believe that Hussein and his descendants are the rightful rulers of Islam, and who view Hussein as a holy martyr. We saw many Shia pilgrims from Iraq and Iran at the shrine (it was easy to pick them out because the women were dressed in long black robes.) What can I say? Grown women were weeping in front of me. The men were chanting Hussein’s name and beating their chest. I don’t really get it. My discomprehension was shared by a Dutchman I met named Jerome, who I commiserated with for a bit. “Congratulations on your new president,” Jerome told me. Drop dead, foreigner, I thought to myself.

Last, but certainly not least, the mosque also houses the tomb of Salah al-Din, the Muslim hero who drove out the Crusaders and conquered Jerusalem. His tomb contains two coffins: a wooden one draped in a green cloth, which actually contains his body, and a white marble coffin that was a gift from the German emperor in 1903. The emperor apparently thought that a wooden coffin wasn’t good enough for Salah al-Din, and the Muslims said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and kept both.

I suppose this goes without saying, but the Crusades are far from ancient history here. In its charter, Hamas labels the French/British conquest of the Middle East after World War I as a continuation of the Crusades. The charter (which we had to read on the trip) recounts the story of a French general who kicked Salah al-Din’s tomb and said, “We have returned, O Salah al-Din.” Because the State of Israel was birthed from the British occupation of Palestine, its existence is also seen as an extension of the Crusades by many Middle Easterners. Saddam Hussein tried to style himself as a modern Salah al-Din, although he never got around to liberating Jerusalem himself.

Aesthetically, the Umayyad Mosque is just frickin’ beautiful. A huge white courtyard, three highly decorated minarets, a huge painting of paradise on the highest portion of the wall, green, blue and red stained glass windows on the inside of the main hall – it’s just sweet. It’s also a nice contrast from all the Ottoman mosques we saw in Turkey. One of the minarets at the mosque is known as the “Isa” minaret, Isa being the Arabic name for Jesus. According to Muslim tradition, Jesus will return one day and preach Islam from the top of the Isa minaret. I guess we’ll see.

Syrian food might be my favorite in the Middle East. Today we discovered a place that serves absolutely delicious falafel for 20 Syrian pounds, or about 40 cents, and the meal we had at the Krak des Chevaliers was probably the best in the semester. And then there’s the slushies and ice cream.

Syria also has the market cornered on pirated DVDs. There are movie stores on almost every street, selling pirated movies burned onto ordinary blank DVDs in plastic bags for 25 or 50 pounds. Our group went a little movie-crazy. I may or may not have bought nine movies. My flatmate Austin may or may not have bought seventy-one.

But there’s more to shopping in the Old City than food and movies. There were shops selling paintings, music, kheffiyahs and scarves, icons, carpets, and more. My favorite purchase of the Syria trip: a baseball cap with the Iraqi flag on it. I’ll be wearing this on campus next semester; look for it!

The day was capped off by a visit to the hamaam, a Turkish bathhouse. The girls and guys separated for this one. The guys got to wear towels inside; I understand the girls were not so fortunate. Or more fortunate. Whatever. I’ll let my roommate Brian take over on this one:

It was one of the manliest experiences I’ve ever had. We go in and they have a big room with marble basins under spigots lining the walls. Everyone gets a sponge and soap and shampoo. You can spend time in there cleansing yourself, or cruise into the side room for a blast of steam in the sauna. Meanwhile there are 2 guys coming around and taking turns violating us. The first guy makes you lay on the tile and he has a sponge…actually, come to think of it, it was steel wool…and SCRAPES you down, when he’s ready for you to roll over he gives you a good hard slap. Man number two gives you the most aggressive massage of your life, which actually felt really nice. A favorite move was when he takes his fist behind your knee and then slams your leg over it.

Whereas Turkey only blocks YouTube, Syria blocks both YouTube and Facebook, ever since Facebook was used to organize anti-government protests in Egypt last summer. Apparently, other websites are blocked as well, but I didn’t want to explore to find which ones and have the censors see a whole bunch of pro-democracy URLs being entered from the monastery. Tonight, a North American gentleman I spoke with, whom I shall not identify in any way, but who definitely knows what he’s talking about, told me, “There is no talking in Syria. A few weeks ago, a businesswoman was sent to jail for sending a rude joke about the president through e-mail. You are in the ultimate police state. Syria has sixteen separate spy agencies all reporting on you and on each other. There’s someone who’s reported that you’re here tonight. The Old City is very closely watched.” Welcome to Basharland.

Day 12

Free day! I spent most of the day shopping with Aaron and Ashley in the Old City. I tried to withdraw some money from an ATM, but it didn’t work. Two possibilities that I can see: 1) My bank shut down my card when I used it in Egypt before we left. (That is pretty suspicious.) 2) Syria is under US sanction, and that includes banking. Thankfully, Ashley was kind enough to loan me some money.

Today, I met my first Iranian. He was a very nice man, who took a picture of Ashley, Aaron and I by the statue of Salah al-Din outside the western gates of the Old City. When we realized where we were all from, he smiled and said, “Our governments are like this,” pounding his fists against each other, “but we can still be friends.”

Inside the covered souk, we met a shopkeeper named Kaman, whom we bought some colored kheffiyahs from. He was an interesting character with a lot to say. He liked my Iraqi flag hat, and told me, “I can tell you have peace in your heart because you wear that hat.” Bush on the other hand, he wasn’t too fond of. (Shocker, I know.) “I’m very sorry to say, but Bush is a killer,” he said, claiming that Bush has killed two million people in Iraq and Afghanistan. 150,000 would be a closer figure, most of them killed by Islamic terrorists or criminals, but I wasn’t about to argue. Besides, I’m getting my facts from a media that, according to Kaman, is controlled by the Jews. I wanted to ask him what he thought about Bashar and his father, who’ve killed their fair share of Muslims, but I didn’t think I would get a straight answer. (Nor did I want him to risk giving me a straight answer.)

Kaman didn’t believe that Obama would truly bring a change to American foreign policy, but he was optimistic that Jews, Christians and Muslims could live in peace again. “We all follow the same God,” he told us. “I will raise my children to love peace, and you raise your children to love peace, and one day we will have peace.” We promised him we would, paid for our kheffiyahs, and shook his hand goodbye. Because of his Muslim beliefs, Kaman wouldn’t shake Ashley’s hand, but he promised he would “keep her smile in his heart.” Aww...

Sometimes it’s hard to tell how much of what these shopkeepers tell us is genuine, and how much is part of the effort to sell us stuff. Or maybe they engage in genuine conversation as part of their effort to sell us stuff. Anyway, it makes for good stories later on.

After dinner that night, I went back to the shop to buy another kheffiyah (3 dollars is a pretty good price, and they were nice.) Kaman’s brother was manning the shop, and proved to be equally interested in the election and American politics. Somehow, our conversation drifted to the war, and I found myself apologizing for what happened on the border (the American special forces attack on an al Qaeda operative in a town near the Iraqi border, which apparently killed eight civilians as well). I felt a little deceptive afterwards. I’m not sorry our military went after a terrorist. I was sorry that civilians got killed in the process, but that will always be a part of war. I guess if I’m going to represent America to the Syrians I meet, I want them to meet a person who sincerely wants peace between our countries.

More cross-cultural mayhem: Tonight, Andrea the intern held an optional co-ed meeting about the sexual harassment issue, which I chose to attend. I don’t think I’ve written about this very much before, but it’s bad, and if you’re a western woman in the Middle East, it’s a virtual certainty. After this semester, I have very little respect for Arab men (with a few exceptions). At the meeting, the girls in attendance shared their stories with us. I’m glad I heard them, but they made my blood boil and made me feel helpless all the same time. Ever read 1984? Good for you. Remember the part where the Party leader explains to Winston that it’s not enough to kill traitors – you have to get them to recognize that you’re right, and then kill them? That’s what I wanted to do to every single man who hurt my sisters: beat them into a pulp until they realized just how disgusting their actions had been, and went crawling on their hands and knees to apologize. (I know it’s a little difficult to imagine a guy with my physique beating someone into a pulp, but bear with me.) The most infuriating part of this culture is how accepted it is. They don’t even see it as a big deal. What is wrong with these people?

Day 13

Today, we visited the US cultural center, which is right across from the US embassy, both of which have been closed to Syrians ever since the border attack. I was kind of surprised: both the embassy and the cultural center are kind of ghetto. I wouldn’t have known what they were if we hadn’t gone there. Both are surrounded by high walls and fences, but not really identified in any way. When the cultural center is open, it serves thousands of Syrian students, so the closure really isn’t hurting anybody but Syrians. But when you have no military options, no diplomatic leverage and no economic ties, what else do you do when you’re attacked? Besides, there was definitely some seditious materials on the walls inside the cultural center: a big copy of the Declaration of Independence in Arabic, and posters explaining the tenets of democracy. If I was Bashar, I wouldn’t want my people anywhere near that stuff.

We got to speak to one of the State Department’s diplomats at the cultural center. Whenever he spoke of the border attack, he used the word “alleged.” I guess our government’s still not owning up to it. Aside from that, he was pretty frank with us, as Dr. Dave asks all our speakers to be – which also means I can’t write all the cool things he said on this blog. (Not that it needs to get any longer, huh?)

During our last round of shopping today, I came across a gold wristwatch engraved with Saddam Hussein’s face. Lest there was any doubt in my mind, a young Syrian man came up to me, pointed to the watch, and said, “That’s Saddam.” All righty. There’s some solidarity among the Baathists. I took a picture of the watch for posterity.

As we waited for the bus to come near the western gate of the Old City, we got a wonderfully vivid last sight of Syria. As we watched some stray cats playing near the gate, a man approached with a bag full of raw meat. I think you know where this is going...OK, I’ll tell you! He threw a huge hunk of bloody raw meat on the grass, and about twenty stray cats attacked it, making, well, a bloody mess. Yum. If there’s a symbolic meaning to be had there, I leave it to all of you.

On to Jordan!

The last sight we saw on the Syrian side of the border was a big picture of Hafiz and Bashar smiling at you as you leave the socialist paradise they’ve created. You know, the personality cult was kind of charming at first, but after a week, I was ready to go visit a moderately democratic country.

So you can imagine how my heart fell when the first thing we saw in Jordan was a big poster of the late King Hussein. Followed quickly by a banner of his son, the current ruler of Jordan, King Abdullah. If there are Barack Obama posters up everywhere when I get back, I’m going to be very upset.

Day 14

This was our only day in Jordan. We stayed at the Days Inn in Amman for two nights, but didn’t really get a chance to interact with Jordanian culture that much. On the way into Amman last night, we passed by a large Palestinian refugee camp in a valley, but couldn’t see much. Today, we put on our swimsuits, loaded up the bus and drove to the eastern side of the Dead Sea. On the way, we passed by Mt. Nebo, the mountain where God showed Moses all of Canaan before he died. There’s so much history in this country. (After all, it’s half of biblical Canaan.) It’s a shame we can’t spend more time here.

The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth, and I noticed. As we went down, my ears started popping. At the resort we stopped at, we were greeted with a sign, which warned us: “Do not dive. Do not swim far from shore. Protect eye and mouth from watre. Try to swim on your back.” All wise words. Floating effortlessly in the saltwater was great fun, but there’s little room for error. Get any of that water in your mouth or eyes, and you’re done swimming for the day. Thankfully, I did not have that misfortune. Even so, I only stayed in for about fifteen minutes. The saltwater has a...chafing effect. In certain areas. The resort had a lot of showers and clean, chlorine-filled pools, so I rinsed off and devoted myself to reading for the rest of the stay. At this point in my journey, I am switching from the “Peoples and Cultures” reader – Turkey, Syria and Jordan – to the “Conflict and Change” reader – Israel and Palestine – in preparation for our journey to Jerusalem tomorrow. Strange – to be reading about the West Bank on the shores of the Dead Sea, within view of the actual West Bank for the first time.

“Oh yeah – this is the Middle East” Moment of the Day: Turning on the TV in my hotel room and seeing none other than Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, giving a sermon.

Next post in Jerusalem!