Liz and Jim Patton

Syria

October 14, 2010

When we arrive in Damascus, we have a guide. She has lived many years in the US where her husband worked for a US company. She is the daughter of a Christian mother from Czechoslovakia and a Muslim father (this sort of mixed background is very common in these countries), has two teenage sons, and knows world politics, electronics, lots of modern culture, US TV shows, etc. She’s a delight. She is covered – a head wrap covered by a long scarf, and wears long sleeve shirt and a long skirt, with walking shoes. She has an itinerary that she tries to make us maintain, and it is a relief to relax and leave that to her while we focus on trying to disrupt it to take pictures.

Damascus is different from what we have experienced in Lebanon. The people are much more friendly; as in Iran they constantly stop us to ask where we are from, they all have a relative somewhere in the US, follow US sports. They are proud that it is a safe country. Our guide, in fact, does not like to travel to Lebanon because it is so dangerous, with its many militaries lining the streets and the constant danger of uprisings. There is no visible military presence here, and the people seem to feel safer for that.

But this peace comes at a price. The country is a dictatorship. Hafez al-Assad was president for 30 years of bloody and tight-fisted rule, and when he died in 2000, his son Bashir took over. There is hope that Bashir may introduce reforms, but none are yet evident.

At our first dinner in Damascus we met with the man who owns the tour agency that set up our trip. It was a continuation of our education in the perspectives of the area on the forces that are at the root of the conflicts here. He is a wealthy, well-educated, well-connected man, with multiple business interests. He is a Christian whose wife is part German. (10% of Syrians are Christian.) He complains that Syria is constantly thwarted by the US, which won’t let any companies sell to Syria, and prevents other countries from doing so. He explains to us that it should be clear that 9-11 was executed by a hi-tech group, and could not have been engineered by Al Qaeda, who do not have enough education. This is not a wild conspiracy theory in Syria, it is accepted. Nancy, who lives in Abu Dhabi, UAE, says it is also accepted as truth there.

The first full day in Damascus is spent seeing monuments. It’s an ancient city, so there are many, and they are, to be fair, interesting.  St. Paul was struck blind, converted to Christianity and given his sight back in Damascus. His church is here. The Umayyad Mosque is Syria’s most important mosque and second only to Mecca and Medina in importance. The site was originally a pagan temple dedicated to Hadad then Jupiter. Under Constantine, it became Christian, and then, in 636, the Muslims converted part of it to a mosque. Interestingly, for ~ 70 years both Christians and Muslims continued to use different parts of the building for worship, entering at the same gate, just heading different directions. Finally, though, in 708 Caliph al-Walid (head of Damascus) tossed out the Christians and built a really impressive mosque with wonderful mosaics and a huge courtyard modeled after the one in Medina.  It has survived for 1200 years in spite of successive invasions, Mongol sackings, earthquakes and fires. We wander around here for a time. It is filled with people – some tourists, but many families in the closed area and also the courtyard, some praying, some just watching their children run around.  We go to the Azem palace (home of the Caliphs and really quite posh) and then to the tomb of Saladdin (scourge of the crusaders). The Historical Museum of Damascus has the original alphabet of Ugarit (the first Cuneiform alphabet) and the first written musical text, with notes and words recorded next to each other.

By mid afternoon we have seen a church, a mountain top vista, a mosque, a palace  and a museum. A rebellion is building among the troops, and we turn on our poor guide. She finally takes us to a covered bazaar adjacent to the mosque, where we see a man selling fruit juice from a 5 foot silver pitcher attached to his body (he pours by tipping himself at the waist – two sizes of plastic cups are held in stacks on his belt and he sings as he does it. Next is an ice cream shop – a man is making ice cream balls with his hands – he mixes the cream and sugar in a large bowl set in dirt and ice – then tosses each ball into a container, where it’s dipped in nuts and put in a cone and sold immediately – the lines are long. The market is filled with families with dress from all over the Middle East and beyond. Many are from Iran – you can tell them by the long black abiyahs the women wear;  we see one Emirati family with a nanny for each child.  The bazaar is filled with life, people to talk with, places to shop and wonderful people to photograph.

October 15, 2010

We leave Damascus much too soon to go to Palmyra. The drive is interesting – we make only one stop – at the “Baghdad Café Rt. 66,” a Turkish chain filled with Syrian Tchotchkes, clothes for Audrey to try on. We’re able to get a Diet Pepsi so all are happy. On the road, we make the driver stop at a road sign on the highway telling the distance to Baghdad. The driver is worried – last time he did this the police held the group for three hours asking questions. Somehow we get away without that.

Palmyra was a huge city of great historical importance. There is an Agora, a colonnaded street, a theater, temples. baths and burial sites. New discoveries are still occurring. The sheer quality and quantity of these ruins, from eras covering thousands of years, attracts archeologists from all over the world. But not us.

October 16, 2010

Today we drive to Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria at 1.7M and site of fabulous souks (markets.) The plan is to see three sites on the way, but another rebellion breaks out as we plot a way to avoid another day of walking in the hot desert seeing rocks. We manage to cut out several sites. The drive is all desert: small Bedouin towns, a few sheep and camels. When a town appears, it appears as beige squares sandwiched between the endless flat beige of the desert floor and the haze of the sky.

Along the road we see the Raqa Market– a couple of acres of makeshift tents – so we stop. Limes, olives (huge bags) cucumbers, squash, eggplants, rugs, fabrics, plastic furniture, sheep, goats, chickens. Typical. The women are all covered – wearing black scarves and heavy black coats in the hot desert sun. Young girls work with their mothers to shop or to sell, while the boys run free. Unfortunately, it is starting to shut down for the day.

A man begins to follow us, making sure no one bothers us. When we go to the Euphrates River an hour or so later he gets out of his car to tell us about it. Then, when we stop for lunch, he is there again. Our guide explains later that he is “security” to make sure we are not hassled by anyone.

The guide tells us a wonderful story about the people of Homs, a nearby city. When the Mongols came through and sacked a town (in the 9^th century) they would kill everyone, then stack the bodies at the city gate. In Homs, before the invaders showed up, the whole population put their clothes on backwards, their sandals on the wrong feet, and walked around babbling nonsense. The Mongol general took one look at them and decided he couldn’t kill such a ridiculous people and rode on.  Still today, the word “Homsy” means someone who is crazy.

Aleppo

October 17, 2010

The perspectives of the people we are meeting here are so far afield from what we know that it is dizzying, and we spend much of our time talking about them. Our guide is Moslem. She did not cover until her children began to be old enough to notice, and she decided that she wanted to be consistent with what she was trying to teach them. They were living in the US at the time. She explains that there were a series of prophets, Adam, Moses, Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed. Mohammed was the last one, and there will be no more.

When we broached the subject of the unopposed elections in Syria, she explained that she believes that the US system is pretty much the same. There is a power base (that she refers to as “they”) which is deciding who will be President, then using the two party system as a process to do it.

Liz and Nancy had a fascinating conversation today with the Archdeacon of the Armenian Church in the Christian corner of town. He is a young man (30-35), serious and intense, who gave us a tour of the church. There are about 50,000 Armenian Christians in Aleppo, 2% of the population. Armenian Christianity is the “true way” because Armenia was the first country to officially adopt Christianity (in 301 AD.) I said, “I never knew that.” He stared at me for a moment and then replied, “Now you do.” The head of the church is called the “Catholicus.” There is no relation between the Armenian church and the Roman Catholic church (he was almost offended at the question.) There were several monuments to the Armenians slaughtered by the Turks in 1915, and he went on to explain that the Turks really don’t have a culture. They have only existed for about 600 years, and didn’t even develop their own alphabet, whereas the Armenians have a 3000 year history. Fascinating!