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 Castle of the Kurds & A Ghostly Colonnade

Damascus to Hama, Syria.

I had an interesting conversation with a waiter at le Jardin restaurant in Hama. Everyone likes to practise their English and being naturally friendly they grab every chance they get to speak to foreigners. So we spoke about the lack of tourists and how life was harder because of it, and how he used to write poetry but now he had no leisure time because he had to work harder to support his family. Eventually he got round to the fact that a good friend of his was living in Wales, married to a Welsh girl. She had come to Syria on a visit and had been drinking rather a lot of vodka one evening whereupon she confessed to having slept with 17 men in her life - not all at one time he hastened to assure me - but she told him this was entirely normal. He wanted to know if this was true - the fact that Western women could possibly sleep with 17 men had clearly been on his mind for some time and could I either dispel or confirm her story.........