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.

 

Queen of the Desert

Palmyra, Syria

“Have a nice life” said Mohammed, all of about 7 years old, as I left Palmyra’s famous Victory arch. I had bought some awful postcards from him, but the kids are not begging and tourists are thin on the ground these days, so you pay a few pennies for some postcards.
He was still in place the following day and waved as I drove by.

Wandering through the ruins I met an Australian couple who had been on a mammoth eight-month tour of Europe. They said each time they had seen some amazing site they thought there could be nothing else but then had found themselves in Palmyra, where they were once again in awe. Unlike the principal European cities where gizillions of tourists make entry into sites a waiting game, we had the ruins of Palmyra to ourselves. People are simply afraid to come to Syria. This view is often promulgated by people who have never set foot in the country, (but which does not prevent them from freely offering their erroneous opinions), and politics. It is the lament of the Middle East in general and of Syria in particular. But the region has absorbed and defied wave after wave of conquerors for millennia and the current wave of regional troubles will in time be consigned to a historical footnote too. Seen through this prism one wonders what will endure of our most recent efforts - will we leave ‘democracy’ instead of temples, or will we go down in history as destroyers, like the Mongols?

Palmyra - an over-view.