He had helped us find a taxi from the bus station to our Damascus hotel. It took longer to find kind strangers in Syria, but all we could do was argue with belligerent overcharging taxi drivers until someone intervened.

A week later, we met Abdullah for dinner in the Arabic equivalent of Chili’s. Here, instead of Duncan Sheik, Egyptian music wavered through weak acoustics. Rather than green lamp shades and baseball, lights were bright and soap operas flickered with muted melo-drama. Fountains springing from marble replaced booths and sectional dividers. Busboys in bright cummerbunds, baggy trousers and red tassled top hats, the outfit, which thanks to slapstick American comedy, we’ve most often seen on monkeys, scurried from pipe to pipe, adjusting coals. Apple smoke and cologne mixed with our oxygen. On the table, hummus, fatoush and kebabs were predictably flavorful. Syrup-strewn dates and figs, along with a fruit plate belonging on a lady’s hat, arrived for dessert.

Earlier that evening, he’d taken us to Umuyyad Mosque, from which the souks of Damascus darted and diagonalled. Built in the 8th century, and allegedly containing the head of John the Baptiste, Umuyyad Mosque was originally revered for it’s fine mosaics depicting paradise. According to story, they so impressed Muhammad that he declined to enter, preferring to taste paradise in the afterlife. Umuyyad’s, courtyard, fresh from an afternoon rain and shining with the frost of a light-polluted, but indigo sky, was like a football field of pure marble peace. We’d visited mosques before—in Istanbul and Adana.

But tonight, we’d arrived during evening prayer and at this hour, in a rented hood and cape (looking a lot like a character from the Handmaid’s Tale), I was the only pretender in sight. The cold carpetland was nothing like a church. Men and women prayed in their own private, but invisibly-bordered space. An imam read the Koran aloud to a group of worshippers. Whispering wasn’t required.

Abdullah had walked us through Umuyyad with obvious pride, but he wasn’t a man of Allah and rarely attended mosque. An electrical engineer, he came from a family of professionals, owned real estate, and talked excitedly about the red-label whiskey in his studio flat. He seemed so very. . . .Western.

Yet at a one point, Abdullah refused to have his picture taken. He was nervous about my note-taking. Twice, he warned us not to give out his mobile number to anyone else at the hotel. And now, during what would turn out to be a three hour dinner, our conversation tooled through topics like Brittany Spears, Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzzeneger; couchsurfing, the Discovery Channel and European travel. We were fusing common bonds through pop culture and not much else, navigating through a safe and easy, Sunday-morning street kind of discussion.And our conversation would go no further than this.

Ever since we’d arrived inSyria, we’d felt it impossible to deny the slightly grim disposition of its human faces and cement facades. These people weren’t rude, but they didn’t smile a whole lot either. They were guarded. Unmistakably suspicious of strangers. People who felt the intangible squeeze of a socialist state. Assad was everyone’s big brother and the posters didn’t let anyone forget.

Consequently, as visitors, in our own tunnel between the surfaces of a socialist looking glass, even if followed or monitored, we faced no danger. If an issue erupted, it was Syrians who were called in for questioning. Syrians who would be penciled into a logbook. Syrians who would, from then on, save real conversation for behind closed curtains. This we knew.Yet we remained a novelty for Abdullah. He practically begged us to hit a bar in the Christian Quarter–an evening that would end around “4 or 5 AM”. He offered his extra studio flat to us for free during the summer months. He seemed hungry, stomach rumbling, for outside influence.I never, not once, thought we’d see the communist ghosts of Sofia directing thought traffic on the streets of Damascus. But that’s what happened. Talk about a complex world. And we hadn’t even reached Beirut.

Alice in Damascus. . .

Bearing crosses in Arabic. . .

How many patterns can you find in the picture. . .

Dixie cups with hot fudge. . .

A little further than a flush. . .

When summer meets fall. . .

The colors of overnight delivery–stripped and chipped.

A starry-eyed surprise behind Door #56. . .

Stone, diamonds, dirt and decor. . .

Despite the endless miles of highway and its love affair with the automobile, America’s hitch hiking traditions were long ago spoiled by a hand-full of psychopathic murderers.Not so in much of the rest of the world. Hitch-hiking in South West Turkey is cheap and fun. After our experiences here, I’m rooting for an American thumbs-up renaissance.

In Antakya, Turkey, our last planned stop before Syria, we stayed with Sakine–a friend of Fevy, our host in Antalya–and her sisters:

Feygin, Jaylin (we called her JLo) and Sakine, not yet married, all lived with their mother in a large flat, where they lit a fire to take a shower and drove each other around in a fifteen year-old car. They didn’t mind sharing a bedroom, because it also meant sharing expenses. Most amusing, the girls were tough-skinned, teasing each other (and eventually us) mercilessly, as they drove in the rain, from one nargile bar, restaurant or tourist site to another, JLo singing and movie quoting the whole way. A big Sunday breakfast, a space heater for sleeping, a trip to the coast and a Christmas tree (!) also made for endless good times in Antakya.

Proven by the pillow fight (WHICH TOOK PLACE IN A RESTUARANT) below.

This near-the-Syrian-border town also marked a cultural shift, as the pepper paste became spicier, the hummus more plentiful (hallelujah!) and the Kunefe, a cheese, syrup and pastry dessert, more obligatory. In addition, this family was Alevi, a 15 million-strong religious and cultural community in Turkey. Alevi is profoundly influenced by humanism, where women and men are equal and the focus is on uniting with God during ceremonies including music and dance. Some consider Alevism a type of Shi’a Islam since Alevis accept Shi’i beliefs about Imam Ali.Finally, and perhaps most profoundly, we began to realize just how sacred a ground we were beginning to cover in this part of the world.The Church of St. Peter (merely a cave and rocky Indiana Jones-like escape tunnel) is widely believed to have been dug by Peter (yes, the Apostle!) for the budding Christian community of Antakya (then Antioch), where he and Paul (yes, the other important Apostle!) preached around 50 A.D.It is rumoured that the inhabitants of Antioch were the first to call Jesus’ followers “Christians” (Acts 11:26).

(I did not take the picture above)

But I did take this one–me scooping the allegedly healing water of a dripping pool in the corner of the church/grotto.With such Christian roots, we decided to look a little harder for any current Catholicism. And after a windy walk through the medina,

we found it.

Their guesthouse was without heat, and even then, unfortunately too expensive for our hobo blood, but we visited their altar and Michael video’d and photographed and spoke at length with other parishioners, including a French woman who was WALKING on a pilgrimmage from France to Jerusalem.

Our Syrian border story coming soon. . . .

We are at the end of the beginning. On the road for over fifty six days, our life is predictably unpredictable. Here’s how one day unfolded:

7:00 Michael’s watch alarm goes off.

7:25 We get up. High energy costs mean bedrooms are typically pretty cold, so unless there’s a room heater, I sleep in my clothes. No need to get dressed. I brush my teeth and hair and put the blankets back on the bed (we have long since stopped mourning the lack of sheets). It has rained quite frequently on our trip, so I retrieve my windbreaker and make sure my half-gloves are in the pockets—the kind that homeless people usually wear. It is Saturday. Last time I showered? Wednesday night.

7:45: Tejad asks us if we have everything. He does not live here. Fuat does. But we stayed with Tejad the night before we moved here and he slept over. And yesterday, another guy, Oz, gave us a tour of the mosque, explained why it was $130 to fill up a car with gas here and found us rain ponchos. Tejad is a tall, half-bearded 22-year old studying economics in Adana and is very inclined to laugh. He can recite the Denver Nuggets roster and until last night thought that they were named after McDonald’s famous chicken meal. He’s also a huge fan of the show How I Met Your Mother. We’d never heard of it yesterday, but by now have seen six episodes.

8:00: We are on a city bus to the train station. Tejad insisted on accompanying us there because we are helpless tourists.

8:30: At the station, we buy two tickets to Iskendar for about $10. It’s not much, but we wince as this is the first time we’ve paid for transportation since Day 14.

8:45: Tejad leaves us and Michael goes to get breakfast. Small cheese pastries and a cup of plain yogurt.

10:09: Pretending to read. A complete stranger gives her baby to six college-age kids on the train and they pass the baby around, cooing and giggling before handing him back.

10:15: Having bonded over the child, the kids begin to ask us questions by first huddling over a pen and newspaper then presenting us with sentences they have formed in English. They go something like this:Are you want US be in Iraq?You like Amedinijad?Rapport quickly develops as they giggle and practice their English. They are all cousins—Emre, Ibrahim, Inur, Fudya and Hussein—coming home for the weekend from University.You want come our house?

11:30: We are sitting on the floor in Fudya’s living room with eight Turkish kids eating spinach burek, cabbage, and potato soup. There is a lot of laughing and giddiness. THIS is traveling. Her home is in a small village—a walk, taxi and minibus ride from the train we got off in the middle of nowhere.

11:45: We are introduced to the ram they will slaughter next week for Korban Bayrami, the Muslim holiday.

12:15: We visit their football stadium, the village river, their parent’s orchard and more family members. Friends come by. Tea is served. There is a lot of cheek touching—the physical greeting here in Turkey. When Ibrahim see’s his grandfather, he kisses his hand.

3:30: Using our SIM card in their phone, we call our hosts in Antakya (friends of a couchsurfer in Antalya) and have the kids explain our schedule.

4:30: We are on sitting on $5 bus to Antakya, a bag of 25 oranges in hand as well as a free new pair of socks (you have no idea how exciting that is) and a warm fuzzy feeling, looking out the window at three of our hosts who will not leave the station until we have safely departed. A horror movie (American of course) is playing on the bus television. We are soon offered chocolate cookies and Coke by the bus attendant.

6:00: Standing in a very dark parking lot, only a barber’s lights in sight. We need a phone to call Sakine.

6:02: After two phone calls, a lot of confusion, a barber shop visit, hovering taxi drivers, we are riding in a small white car through a very dark Antakya. We do not know the driver. He will not speak to us.The whole thing would have been very sketchy, but only because why would a very grumpy guy with a broken hand and no gas in his car be willing to drive total strangers to meet another total stranger in another part of town unless he was getting something out of the deal? But the answer to that is “because that guy is Turkish.” And that’s why there is nothing sketchy about this at all.

6:30: We meet smiley, energetic Sakine and Jaylin, two of the three sisters who will host us for two nights (which turned into four) in this much more Middle Eastern city near the Syrian border which claims to be home to the very first church in the entire world. Peter and Paul apparently hung out here.

Night 56 will have to be another blog.