Day 91: Syria

This weekend, approaching one of my last weekends in Jordan, I spent in Syria. Nine of us left from Amman in search of the Abdali “bus station” which people failed to inform us was simply a street where many cabs congregated and we split up on our ride to Damascus. “Wasta” is a term in Jordan which connotes that the one possessing it has many connections. Our cab driver appeared to breathe wasta and smoothly paved our entry to the Immigration office where we were warned prior might be a 3-5 hour wait. I tried with all my might to use my smile to convince the patrol officers to take my French passport instead of my American and they could not understand why I was so adamant. One finally whispered in my ear “Have you been to Israel?” and nervously I explained that I had never been and might potentially like to visit Palestine and would prefer a stamp in my French visa. They told me if I could persuade the “boss” over there in the uniform with the stern mustache that I would be okay. I decided I would rather be interrogated at length in “Palestine” than try to bribe a Syrian police man and be put in jail for failing.

We entered the border at 11am. After approximately two hours, I decided to see what was going on with our passports. In Jordan (and apparently Syria) lines are not straight but instead a horizontal mass with flailing limbs and body odor. When I finally made my way to the “front”, I glued my nose to the glass for an hour and a half until the bald, stoic man behind the counter would pay my American face any attention (we noticed the stain from my forehead when I backed away from the glass). People were trying to shove me to the side, slipping passports underneath my grip on the counter but I wanted to get to Syria. Three hours later, two of my friends and I had been cleared for entry. One had been turned away and sent back to Jordan which put a damper on our day. No excuse was given. Not long after I found myself next to a woman who handed the officer her Iraqi passport (noted: born in Baghdad). She looked at me and smiled. In perfect English she asked me if I needed any help. I told her I didn't understand what the hold up was and she kindly translated my concerns to the officer in Arabic and back to me in Arabic. We chatted briefly and she was as warm as anyone I had met, and spoke kindly to me, laughing about the incompetence of the officers etc. I found myself tongue tied, fearing being almost cold to her as I was taken aback by her kindness with the haunting thought of what I had done to her birthplace, to her home, to her friends, to her. I sat there clamming up wondering how you could be so kind to a stranger like me and so able to separate the government from the people when in the US no one can separate Arab from terrorist. By 10pm, all my friends had been cleared. 11 hours at the border was not exactly what had been anticipated and after a series of unfortunate negotiations with Syrian cab drivers, we found the least sketchy and on our guard began our journey.

Arriving to the hostel was not without its share of stress, and we were told our room would not be ready until 1:30am. We explored the night and found that the food may not be Syria’s best quality. My friend ventured so far as to order lamb brain. The waiter cringed as he wrote the order. The street circles were divided into pentagons much like France and we quickly found that we were some of the only non-Arab people most of Damascus had seen. By 1:30am, we were dead and slept until 8 to begin a day of souks and exploration. Damascus struck us with an air of antiquity that goes way beyond description. It is among the worlds longest continuously inhabited cities and each time you turn in the Old City it does not let you forget that. The depth of the covered souk hits you hard, so does the sprawl of stuffed coyote corpses, veiled wedding dresses, and fluffy red lingerie. The end of the first souk is met by the famous Umayyad mosque and a courtyard ready with a blockade of pigeons that is literally squared off with a steel barrier, as well as a Mickey Mouse man making shawerma. We entered the courtyard as the call to prayer began and the ruins surrounding us with the echo of the call and the swarm of pigeons made us feel as though we were in a trance. We were quite the hot commodity for visual intrigue here. White foreigners are shockingly few. Around and behind the courtyard and the gargantuan mosque lay small shops with wooden doors and stone walls with jewelry and scarves so unique it would put any designer to shame. We certainly helped ourselves to a generous quantity of their stock.

The people with whom we interacted in Damascus were unfailingly kind and immeasurably hospitable. Store owner after store owner would offer to make us tea and would love to talk to us about anything. I found myself negotiating in Spanish with an Arab shopkeeper and translating English to a French couple. The languages in this country confound the senses. What struck us more than the trance-like state of archaic sensory overload and inestimable Syrian hospitality was the amount of males and specifically male children. While I have never been to Egypt, what I have heard from my fellow travelers regarding the children and adolescents and most males in the streets is that they harass and when they try to sell you something they are aggressive and sometimes very rude. These boys were genuinely interested in us and followed us everywhere. Not simply a group, but swarms of boys everywhere we went wanted to watch us, giggled, smiled asked “How are you? What’s your name?” and when we indulged would ask for pictures or a hand shake or simply some attention. Even the children were genuinely kind. After we returned to our hostel (which, I must say, was incomparable to Talal’s in Lebanon) we were greeted with more hospitality and assurance for our safety and aid in our travels and directions to restaurants by our hotel managers (three brothers). We wandered around the city after recuperating in search of a restaurant which took us the better part of an hour (maybe two) and we were unpleasantly surprised with more “French-influenced” food. The best reasoning I could come up with is that Syrians are pissed about the colonization from France and that this was the best retaliatory move they could muster- ruin the food. Most times, when we told people that we were American, they would greet us with crinkly-eyed smiles and say “Ahlan wa sahlan!” (You are welcome), on the rarer occasion, we would get the response of the head hung down in shame and no verbal acknowledgement but “Tsk, tsk , tsk”.

The following day we hired a driver to take us to Palmyra three hours north to see the ruins that ended almost putting Petra to shame. On our drive there we stopped at Baghdad Café and were welcomed warmly by Bedouins who ran the hut. They insisted on ushering us to their tents and dressing us up as them. We spent the next half hour in a Bedouin garb photo shoot with chickens, tractors and shells which gave the Bedouins a solid guttural release. I can only imagine how those photos are going to appear. After taking off our dress-up things, we continued to Palmyra and were blown away by the ruins. We spent four hours exploring them and making our way up the Citadel which gave way to a view expanding miles to the panoramic horizon. The day was fantastic minus the flare up in my throat which allowed me the pleasure of communicating as a pre-pubescent young male who sucked on helium (in English, let alone in Arabic).

We returned to Jordan later the following day and while most of us were glad to return home, I was quite sad to leave Damascus. Never, even in Jordan, have I met a kinder collective group of people (minus the border patrol) and I hope dearly to return.