White Baboon

Sometimes I wonder how I end up where I do.

This was my thought as I walked atop the shoulders of an icy, starry night on a road between Syria and Lebanon, humming Islands in the Stream (it was playing at the duty free shop) and searching my coat pockets for toilet paper.

Our morning departing Beirut had been a hellish nightmare of false starts, perfume peddlers, taxi scams, bus ticket tricks and below-the-highway bust-ups. We’d finally managed to find a five dollar mini-bus, which along with eight other smoking, shifty-eyed males, took us up over the mountain pass and even stopped for a currency exchange. Six weeks ago, on our way in, we’d exchanged cash in panic through a barbed wire fence at the Lebanese entrance while we prayed that our bus didn’t leave without us. It sucked. But this time, despite the confusing conversion of Lebanese Pounds, Syrian Pounds and American Dollars (which were also used in Beirut) we fared better.

But getting our cash was only the first step. At the Syrian entry point, where not one officer spoke English, we discovered via a kind bilingual bystander that it would take five or six hours to issue a visa since they’d have to contact Damascus and wait for approval.

No problem. We’d been warned and were well-prepared with snacks and our books: Eastward to Tartary and Beirut to Jerusalem. Plus, there was a Dunkin Donuts nearby. Swell. All day long we watched hundreds of border-crossers come and go and the moustachioed pea-green-uniformed officers change shifts. But eight hours later, we were still hugging the radiator in our little bucket seats, going a little stircrazy. That’s when paranoia began to set in. We had no idea what was going on back there. Had our request been sent? Were they checking on it? Were visas issued after business hours? Shit, what had I written in my blog about Asad? Bloggers had been recently arrested in Egypt. What was the problem? Damn it America! Look at those Japanese tourists–in and out in five minutes!

Finally, just before 10:00 they motioned us over.

The visas would be issued.

Whew. But now we had to find a ride to Damascus. It was just a forty minute drive, but dark and cold by now, hitchhiking did not sound good. About that time, we heard American voices. Texas accents.

Fifteen minutes later we were sitting comfortably in the front seat of our own knight on a white horse. Except this hero had a 1974, velour interior dirt-dusted Caprice Classic–so big and white it seemed like it would fly. It’s driver, Abu Anas, a friend of the family spoke little English, but lucky for us, Abeer the pharmaceutical rep, Kinan the real estate guru and Zak the attorney spoke good Arabic. Somehow, it was arranged that we would stay with Abu tonight at his home and tomorrow morning he would drive us to Amman, Jordan for a small fee.

So we dropped off the Texans, then headed far out of the center to the cinder block shantytown of his suburban home. It was rockpiles and late-night fruit stands, dark alleys, corrugated tin and cement compounds. But his smile was as wide as the Caprice Classic as he called his wife and told her the good news. Though nearly midnight, he was bringing home guests. American guests. So would she plug in the space heater and put on the tea?

That night we slept in our clothes on a firm bed under three blankets. Harsh security lights courtyard, the outdoor space between the living spaces of his “house”, flooded our room, setting aglow the literally hundreds of garish ceramics displayed in our bedroom, a strange status of wealth in these Syrian communities. The next morning, after a quick teethbrush at the outside faucet, we sat around the kitchen diesel stove while Koran verses san across the television. Did we want tea? Well of course we did. As Abu’s headscarfed wife flowered with facial expressions and three of their nine little boys watched us with delight, we knew we were at a red-level alert for another kidnapping. This would be a close one.

But this time was different. This family was at ease with each other and that made us at ease with them.The energy was buoyant and we relaxed into the comfort of confusion we had come to know so well. I practiced my Arabic numbers. They practiced their English greetings. It was shy smiles and photos all around. Soon, Abu Anas made a move to go and we followed the nonverbals. Onto the white horse we climbed, one leg at a time and he drove us to. . . .not Jordan, but the bus station, where he arranged our seat with a bus-driver buddy of his. A miscommunication. Not too shocking. But it didn’t matter. A free bed, a culture-rich evening and a personal delivery to the bus’ two front positions, the best seats in the house. Abu refused to accept any money.

The Jordanian border, with King Abdullah and Queen Rania smiling at us with delight as if we’d just arrived at their private dinner party, was full of shiny marble, modern mosaics and velvet ropes which swung with order.

Amman here we come.

(Photo by Michael)

Garret and his sister Esther, the Irish backpackers staying across the hall, were planning a trip to Golan Heights. I’d never heard of it—and I apologize. But as Garret ranted on like an action movie trailer about the special permission, bombshelled buildings and sledge-hammered sight of this strange buffer territory, I wasn’t enthused. Hadn’t we seen enough ruins?

Well. .It all started back in the 1967 when Syria lost a bunch of land called Golan Heights to Israel in the Six Day War. This pissed them off. So during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Syria won back 450 sq km of Golan Heights, and a demilitarized, UN-supervised buffer zone began to keep the peace. But now Israel was pissed. Just before giving up Quinetra, a part of Golan Heights just lost back to Syria, they went through and systematically destroyed everything in sight, removing, as Lonely Planet put it “anything that could be unscrewed, unbolted or wrenched from its position.”

(Photo by Michael)

Then they bulldozed what was left. While some say it was revenge, and others claim it served to strengthen the security buffer, it wasn’t pretty. Syria, as you can imagine, now welcomes tourists to witness this act of destruction, just in case there was any doubt about which country was or is in the wrong.Most of Golan Heights–1,200 square kilometres of territory, manned by thousands of troops–is still under dispute. Neither countries seem interested in compromise.

That morning at the bus station, I realized I’d forgotten my passport, which could have been disastrous. But I was optimistic. We made it through two checkpoints where no one seemed to correctly compare the number of heads with the number of documents. And at our final threshhold, after a promise to take photos and patient smiles, we were in.Rain fell freely into the roofless shops of Quinetra’s main street as the five of us shuffled in an unintentionally staggered formation up and down the empty roads, each on our own private walk through the modern ruins of real conflict. Dirt-stained goats grazed in the weeds between garlic-colored stone and gravel. The walls and arches of a stone church appeared like so many we’d paid to see in the past. Climbing the dark, narrow, princess-style spiral of a crumbling minaret, there was a disturbing view of Quinetra’s mine-filled fields and the Israeli territory in the distance. But kilometers of gnarled barbed wire and our Syrian guide kept us on the right path.

Coming upon a kind of checkpoint, our tour was abruptly over. We stood for over an hour in the slanted rain waiting for a ride back to civilization. Soldiers came and went. Gold badged and bereted, some huddled in a small office. Others shot the shit inside a checkpoint station. Another was in charge of lifting the gate for incoming SUVs with “UN” in big, bold and black letters along the side. When encountered, they were timidly friendly, always interested. One little boy, age 10, accompanying his father, practiced his English by shouting to us with a high-toothed, rabbit smile.

Finally, piling into an army jeep with other fatigue-covered men, we rode back to our first interrogator and stood awkwardly in a two by two shelter. Plastic white deck chairs slid on a muddy, public-school tile floor while a red, cable-wrapped, deckless boom box chanted Arabic radio and a small stove dripped propane. An extra-strength candle, which looked a lot like a stick of dynamite had been lit and placed outside the window. Kalushnakavs hung on a row of nails. The guards were nothing but nice.Golan Heights was plenty disturbing, just as anticipated. I kept thinking–all this fighting and destruction over a little piece of land? But Michael reminded me that everything is relative. When your country is this small, a couple hundred kilometers matter more. Who am I to talk, anyway? Had the United States ever permanently lost any sizable land? No, it seemed like we’d had much more experience in taking it away from others.

I am still digesting.

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. . .

Shades of Rockwell shine through as a backpacker gets a shave–one of many Middle Eastern grooming traditions for males.

Dorm bed at the Haramain Hotel, a centuries-year old home in Damascus.

Mother and children stroll the gritty souk of Aleppo, Syria on market day.

Well, almost colorless. . .this shabby facade, part Hollywood haunted house and part soda-shop-wafer, was everywhere in Aleppo.

At the Al Gawaher Hotel in Aleppo, Syria, we spent nine days (and Christmas) recovering from the past three couchsurfing episodes. In this city, when not gazing at its black-wafer-cookie-architecture, authentic bazaar, frequent stares and intimidating citadel-with-moat, we sat in our 50 degree room and enjoyed an Arabian network of satelite television, including four English-speaking channels! Pure gluttony with CNN, Seinfeld, Rocky and dumb Christmas movies followed. Anything to remind us of America.

But sitting in the heated (!) lobby on our very first day was what did me in. We caught a special on American football, a special which by some miracle had chosen to focus on a team called the Denver Broncos and present a photo-music montage (code for tearjerker) of 1995 Super Bowl clips as Cher sang the national anthem.It was quite a moment.

Thanks to fellow travelers, we are sometimes grimly reminded of America’s downfalls. We get shit for our fast-food, our “fake football”, our allegedly difficult border patrol, No Child Left Behind test-score-obsessed teachers, tawdry exports like Brittany Spears. . .and of course, Bush.

Yet, still. Despite ALL of that, what we most often find ourselves saying is: You know, America’s not such a bad place after all.

The most common site on the Syrian street. . .

Snowflakes in stone at the cathedralic ruins of St. Simeon, an eccentric monk who, after seeking seclusion and then attracting unwanted visitors to leer and peer, climbed and lived atop ever-higher pillars for years on end.

Smiling Syrian children waving at us from the back of a pickup truck. . .

The sheep run EXTREMELY fast in Syria. . .

(I know the title sounds like a Country Music Telelvision Countdown Contender, but bear with me.)Black-hooded women, not a speck of face-skin to be seen, scurried toward home, in groups of three along the littered streets. On the main avenue, smoke rose from a schwarma stand, hovering above the gingham, picnic-table-patterned heads of moustached, Muslim men. While CNN had always painted those Arab-symbolizing scarves flowing freely in the sun, tonight they were wound tightly, more like turbans, to battle the winter wind. The whining violins of an Arabic tune were never quite out of earshot. The few palm trees now made claw-like shadows on the street and the racks of pashminas were put away for the night.It was 10:57 PM on Christmas Eve and we were on our way to “midnight mass” at the Latin Church of Aleppo, Syria. We were well-acclimated by now, and although we didn’t dare hold hands in public, there was no real threat in the air. Earlier that day we’d found the Christian Quarter, a maze of alleys with the black Braille-looking doors of a dungeon and multiple churches–one for Orthodox Greeks, one for Latin Catholics, one for Armenian Orthodox, one for Maronites, even others. A whole quarter for us?

I was prepared for a calm, reflective visit–with Christians only 11% of the population, how many could be at midnight mass? But peaceful was not what the universe had in mind. The cathedral was so packed we could barely make it in the door and having been misinformed, we arrived just in time for communion. But we took our place in the mobbed line, gazing at the creamy walls, ballroom chandeliers, understated crucifix, soft paintings and positively beautiful people. All obviously arriving straight from the salon, Christian Syrian women, no matter their age, were highlighted, styled, eyelinered, manicured and pocketbooked to near perfection, wearing an odd, but beautiful mix of class and bling–obviously without a headscarf in sight. The men, as we’d come to expect, were quaffed.

Not until this moment on our trip had we been so conspicuously so out of place and so clearly underdressed. But we couldn’t dwell. I simply vowed never to look down on a casually dressed church-goer ever again and swallowed the body of Christ, facing the stares with a soft smile on my way to the back of the church.The service was in Arabic, but we could sense the rhythms and syllables of a familiar verse here and there. We sang Go Tell It On the Mountain in our own words and Oh Come All Ye Faithful, too, before sinking into a pew for some prayer.Here we were. In Syria. With a whole cathedral full of familiarity to bring us back home.I’ve always believed that no matter which higher power I end up worshipping, Catholicism has provided a wonderful platform from which to leap. Or stand on. Or take a rest upon. When I speak with someone who grew up without religion–with nothing to. . .come back to, to, I am instantly grateful.It’s been foreshadowed, in one way or another, that I might someday return to Catholicism. While I’m not yet certain of that, tonight, I had a greater appreciation than ever before of what I’d been given as a child. Something very concrete, or perhaps sometimes more like marble or stone, to hold on to.

Here’s what we had for lunch today in the souk (winding market).

It’s called Fuul and it’s a mix of beans, yogurt, oil, chickpeas and fresh coriander with sweet raw onion. Community water glass and pita bread included. Cost:30 Syrian Pounds (65 cents)

Other Syrian costs. . . .

Hotel Room: $10/night

Kikkoman Soy Sauce for Cooking: $1.50

Falafel & Egg Wrap: 50 cents

Small Bottle of Water: 30 cents

Hour of Internet: 95 cents

Syrian Times Newspaper (English): 10 cents

Large, Squeezed While You Watch Grenadine, Banana & Orange Juice: $1

Sheraton Christmas Lunch Buffet with Alcohol: $57 (Thanks Mom and Dad)