Welcome to Syria

Syria April, 2008

I am returned from a very un-solo trip to Syria, a country labeled a 'state sponsor of terror' by the US  administration. It did not feel like that as we walked unmolested late at night through the streets of Damascus, or met with scores of teenage girls in Maloula, mingled with thousands of schoolchildren in Bosra, went shopping in Palmyra and had a private visit of the citadel in Aleppo.  Just for good measure we met with Dr. Mohammed Habash, a member of the Syrian parliament and General Director of the Islamic Studies Center in Damascus http://altajdeed.org/en/.

He gave us a very frank talk touching on subjects as diverse as the US invasion of Iraq, the historic link with and involvement of Syria in Lebanon,  reformist and conservative Islam, the evolution of the Shia/Sunni divide and the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli crisis with its attendant rise in militant extremism there and elsewhere.   

We began our tour of the country by driving north. Krak des Chevaliers - supreme expression of medieval castle-building - had a moat again, the first time I have ever seen it.

Reflected blue moat of Krak des Chevaliers abutting its infamous steep glacis.

Hama sits on the banks of the river Orontes; at dusk swallows flitted and darted in and out of the city's ancient eaves, and its waterwheels glowed amber in the floodlights, while in the morning a barrage of twittering avian exuberance filled the yellow limestone and black basalt paved courtyard of the hauntingly lovely Azem Palace – smaller but more refined than its sister palace in Damascus. 

The waterwheels or norias at night.

The highly-decorated windows of Azem Palace in Hama.

 

The Euphrates Valley

Aleppo and the Euphrates, Syria

Standing at the 10th century Qinnesrin Gate, one of the most beautiful and intact of Aleppo, I was listening to an old blind man who was being teased by passing schoolboys, roar at them hoping they’d fail every exam in the coming term, when a young and very earnest-looking woman approached me. She was dressed from head to foot in black; long black coat and black hijab. I did not understand what she wanted as she pulled out a book from her bag and showed me pages of Arabic script - it transpired that she wanted me to know that just because she and other Syrian women might wear hijab and dress traditionally, it did not mean they were uneducated. The book she was showing me was her poetry and she had a good and well-paying job in a government ministry. I found her gesture touching but at the same time a bit sad that she felt the need to set me straight as it were, knowing the reputation among ‘Western’ women of Islamic women who wear hijab.