Syria

Day 313

*I'm obliging a request to make the text shweyyah bigger--although it no longer matches my microscopic handwriting...

Aware that my 6 month visa to Syria was set to expire, I split a serveece with three friends for about 5 days in and outside of Damascus.

Suq al-Hamadiyya

Syria will always be synonymous with hot in my mind. My previous stay in As-Sham was last July, and this year was just as stifling. But we had a great time the first day traipsing around the Old City (rather haphazardly), taking in the sights and smells of the narrow alleyways and the affable nature of the Damasceans. Our secondary goal was to search out a handmade glassworks just outside the Old City walls, and after our meandering tour we finally found the place, where the workers served us tea in front of the glass oven while we watched the guys work. After dinner at famed Khawali in the Old City, Uliana and I sampled the shops and famous Bakdesh ice cream at Suq al-Hamidiyya before catching a performance by Damascus' last oral storyteller at the Nafura coffee house before bed.












Damascus shopkeep (it was hot) and Glassblowers at work



While two of my friends had headed back to Amman for work the following day, Uliana and I continued onward and outward from Damascus. First stop (after a long hunt for the Hertz rental car office) was the October (1973) War (with Israel) Panorama on the city outskirts. (I use a lot of parentheses). This was a real treat in Syrian state propaganda. It's always good to catch the 'other side' of this conflict, as was our goal, but I was even a little unprepared for the one-sided presentation of history. The huge museum building is flanked with military hardware and relics from the war. To the left is a collection of captured and destroyed 'enemy' equipment--including a pair of downed fighter jet skeletons, which are carefully tagged with 'American (or French) made' plaques. To the right is the pride of 70s era Syrian military equipment (and a joint Syrian-Soviet space capsule), which were good for some unsupervised climbing around on if nothing else.














The main attraction, however, is the panorama itself. After a 10 minute film of old war footage, our guide took us to the top floor of the museum building--essentially a huge circular auditorium with a rotating set of seats centered within. From our seats, a carefully recreated battle scene diorama spreads out 360 degrees until it almost seamlessly melds into the North Korean-painted floor to ceiling wall mural. As we sat, rotating ever so slowly, patriotic march hymns and a scratchy narrator relayed the story of the battle over the Israeli-controlled reconnaissance and observation tower that the Syrian soldiers bravely assaulted. In the pale blue sky above, dog fights and mortar shells glided over our heads.

You just can't make this stuff up

We hit the road after noon and drove north into the town of Ma'lulah, one of only three villages (all in Syria) in the world where the ancient Semitic language of Aramaic is still spoken. The small town is almost completely Christian, so Uliana and I hiked up the hills to a couple of monasteries honoring Christian martyrs from the late Roman pagan era, and explored a small cave said to have provided sanctuary for persecuted early Christians. We tried to pick up a few phrases of Aramaic between sampling local wines and lunch with a Ma'lulah patriarch, but I will admit to have forgotten most of it here just two weeks later.

I guess day two was essentially a spiritual journey, so we continued on racing the sunset to the secluded monastery of Mar Musa that I had heard about from a friend, just outside of another small Christian town of An Nabbek. The place has an interesting story to it. Essentially what was once a Roman Byzantine church and mountain fortress (first established by a Ethiopian prince-turned-Christian wanderer) was rediscovered in a state of disrepair by an Italian Jesuit priest in the 1980s, who then convinced his order (and the Italian and Syrian governments) to provide the funds to restore the site as a functioning monastery. The Priest, still only in his late 40s, is multilingual (and fluent in classical Arabic, in which all liturgy and readings take place). What's more, the monastery is multi-cultural and actually religiously indiscrimate--welcoming all denominations of Christianity and curious visitors of any religion. We hiked up the hundreds of stone steps to arrive at the low door of the monastery just after dark, and just in time for evening prayers.












Deir Mar Musa perched in the Syrian hills, with refreshingly spartan and quiet living quarters

We were the newcomers, but Mar Musa attracts all manner of Arab Christian pilgrims and foreign backpackers. The biggest group of the roughly 15 guests when we were there was a crew of young Egyptian Copts. Mar Musa's doors are always open; some stay 2 days, some ten years. Room and board are free, as long as you do some work to pay your way. After morning prayers the second day, Uliana and I spent about two hours with one of the Egyptians cleaning about 3 days worth of monastery dishes, before prepping some locally-grown veggies for the lunch meal. I could have stayed a week there, but Uliana and the other sights in Syria were calling me onward.

Continuing north, we passed through the city of Hama, famous for its late Roman period waterwheels and, more recently, for a local Muslim Brotherhood uprising in 1982 that was brutally supressed by former Syrian leader Hafaz al Asad via an army artillery barrage. The locals don't get too many tourists, and were creeping Uliana out, so we quickly pressed further north to Halab (Aleppo).


Aleppo has an (even older) Old City of its own, and an impressive Islamic citadel perched high above the bustling city. We took in our fair share of both that evening and early the next morning. I personally found Aleppo a bit disappointing, so I won't write much here.

le Krek

We spent the remainder of our last day at the very impressive Krek de Chevalier French (and later Islamic) crusader castle. Like the Aleppo citidel, we covered the whole thing on foot sans tour guide--and in about 4 hours, before grabbing lunch and some localish wine to hold us over for our trip to the Med. coast near Tartus. We drank the wine and drank in the sinking sun on a pebble-strewn quiet beach north of Tartus, taking time for a tip in the warm water before our long drive back to Damascus for that last night.



Mission accomplished. I (heart) Syria. Even more now than the first trip just to Damascus a year ago. Good people, great food, amazing sights. Hopefully future travels or work in this region will take me back someday.

I'll miss you Bashar