Syria: Aleppo, Hama, Palmyra and back

Dear All

Syria is a country of mistaken identity. From the outside, it looks like a menacing Arabic military monster where everyone carries a gun, yells out loud while firing and kills all foreigners without question. From the inside, it is a peaceful dusty country full of warm hospitality and over eager good intentions. Syria treats it's foreign guest with more appreciation than I have seen anywhere else. This place is jam packed with old ruins, nauseating cleanser coffee and acrobatic rotisserie chicken. Most people know the word "welcome" more than they know the words for hello. This is a country which knows Jesus.There are many Christian pilgrimage sites including a city where the locals still speak the original language of Jesus. There is the first church ever here (created around 40 AD) and Christan graffiti everywhere. This is a diverse land filled with dead cities, open antiquities trade and sheep farmers. I arrived in Aleppo with no problems.

My five hour commute from Tripoli to Aleppo was uneventful. I got to the border of Lebanon and checked out then to the border of Syria , with visa ready, and checked in. It was all very easy. I watched a landscape change from riddled old apartment complex to motley sewn fabric tents scattered between run down housing. The bus pulls into a dirty little lane with some other buses lined against the plastic strewn road. Helplessly lost, I hail a cab and ask for my hotel and got in. Unable to give the correct change of 25 Syrian Pounds (SP) with only 1000 bills in my hand, the driver gave me a free ride. It was the start of good things to come. I gave him 1000 Lebanese Pounds instead. His generosity, though without a word of English, was a pleasant breeze through the blizzard of bargaining, fighting and scamming that I have experienced from the very start of my trip. My hotel, a rock dungeon style with a rooftop dormitory. In fact, many places in Syria have wondrous rooftops that open to the temperate winter nights, gaze over the endless deserts and echo the Call to Prayer from green fluorescent tubed minarets of glorious foreboding mosques. Dorming in Syria is like well protected camping though the nights are chilly and the Japanese tend to snore a lot. I only stayed in Aleppo one night.

I forgot my favourite towel in Tripoli and though the value of the towel can be replaced, the sentiment can’t as I bought it in India . I called the hotel twice to see if a Slovenian girl who was coming to Syria could bring it to me but she was heading to Hama – a city in the centre of Syria so I needed to head there fast. I had one day in Aleppo so I decided to get to a Commonwealth cemetery to photograph the tombstones for my friend Ralph. Without any help from the hotel and none of the taxi drivers understanding where to go, I went to the tourist office to get some advice but when I reached them, they were about to set off on a tour of the tourist attractions outside the city and offered me a free tour. I hesitated. I need to get this cemetery done or I would have to return to Aleppo later in my trip. They told me that the tour would only last two hours and that there would be plenty of time to go so, with false promise in hand but free tour ahead, I went aboard.

The first place we went to was the Dead Cities which aren't really dead at all but mildly populated stone houses with roman and Christian ruins everywhere and olive trees growing in the backdrop. The road down was a long drive but the cobblestone red barriers that edged the road, the open flat desert and the Osho-phile Lebanese for company made for a great trip. I got a free English translation describing the 2000 year old rocks that used to be churches but are now just backyard playthings. We ate lunch at some bizarre located restaurant with magnificent traditional food of barbecued chicken, hummus, falafel and all the pita you can eat before the tea and locally grown, huge and hard green grapes came out. Full and satisfied, enjoying the conversation of some Osho youths trying to liberate my consciousness from its prison and engage me into a world of enlightenment, I headed back into the bus to head to St Simeon's Basilica.

These set of ruins are the remains of a church that was erected for a man who stood on a pillar and preached the word of God for 36 years never leaving the pillar until he died. The basilica was a wonderfully over arched rock pile that impressed me more than the average rock pile that I go to. The earthquake rubble that normally puts me to sleep was actually incredible aesthetically pleasing and I was impressed with the absurdity of the devotion of a people of the insanity of one man. Can you imagine if someone did this today? Preaching the world of God from the top of the CN Tower would lead to imprisonment and not to revetment. How the world has changed.

By the end of the tour, I had missed my chance to go to the cemetery so I settled into bed in the dorm, tried to ignore the Japanese guy grinding his teeth while he sleeps next to me and head out to Hama the next day.

I went to Hama with Julie – a Californian with a fantastic sense of humour. We settled into our hotel and wandered the streets of Hama to find them empty. Saturday here is a holiday though this concept seems to vary from city to city instead of by country. In Christian villages, Sunday is the day off but in more Muslim places it seems that Friday and Saturday are days to relax and pray. The empty streets did mean that we could wander the place without the classic sidewalk collisions and seeing the Norias (1600 year old waterwheels used for irrigation) could be seen by us and the other Syrian tourists. We walked to another typical citadel and then ate more chicken like we have been doing for days. It seems that the Syrians have a very limited diet of falafel, shwarma and rotisserie chicken. The last few days have been a cloudy forecast for my gastronomical weather report. It has become hard to eat on a budget and eat the same things over and over but you put it in your mouth, smile and try to enjoy. At least there is no more curry, spicy and rice!

I took several tours out of Hama . Though Hama is a nice town, it hasn’t much to offer but as a hub for the sites around the city. First we went to Afamia.

Two minibuses land 30SP later, Julie and I were in Afamia. It is a long lane way of pillars about 2km long. It takes about 20 minutes to see and, unlike Julie who was fascinated by the emptiness and destruction, I found this place more dis-interesting than usual. The pillars here were just a multiple of the pillars at Byblos or Baalbek or anywhere else I've been. Peaceful at the top and after a nice drink with a local family who did their best to welcome us, we headed back to the hotel to sleep the night and prepare for tour two.

Crac des Chevaliers is another crusader castle set on top of a mountain side. It is big, beautiful to look at from afar and seemingly impenetrable. This is the last that interested me. From the inside, it is just hollow halls and destroyed fragments of rock that need to be returned to their original home. I wandered the castle with Jamie, a Canadian from Victoria who has been on a monster tour for almost a year starting in Russia and passing through India , Pakistan and Iran to finally come here. Both of us have seen our fill of old rocks and found no interest in the place. The ride up in a semi-luxury tourist car set with a TV that televised the best tourist attractions of Syria and the 5 star hotels advertised that we could stay at, was the best part of the whole experience. We took a local bus back. One tour a day is plenty for those with no schedule and little money. The next day we went to Palmyra .

Palmyra seems to be the exception to the rule in Syria . Unlike most Syrians who are a wonderful, welcoming culture, the Syrians from Palmyra are a money thirsty mob desperate for every tourist coin they can get their hands on. From the moment you arrive in the tiny town, you are touted, cheated and lied to. They try to pull you into their store, overprice you for the simplest things and harass you endlessly. I am reminded of how many places that have had tourism have turned into cesspools of deceit as a result of needed tourist income, like Thailand and Vietnam , and now Syria is soon to follow. I am glad I am seeing this country now instead of ten years from now when the tourist industry truly messes this place up.

The city of Palmyra is small and fairly ugly. Concrete block unfinished housing fill garbage streets with children who beg for money and pens and don't hesitate to open your bag and reach in. The store owners call you in from the one main street here and the kids try to sell you postcards and yell at you when you don't. Thank god the ruins of Palmyra are so beautiful.

The ruins are a multitude of different styles, shapes and textures. The old rocks are wrinkled and bumpy from the erosion of wind and sand while the new reconstruction is smooth and uniform. There are the long line of white columns that stretch for a few kilometres which start at a large arched entrance, have an alter with four surrounding pillars in the middle and end somewhere in the horizon. Off to the west of the archway is a large amphitheatre made of more white stone which accentuates the white pink desert around and the ruins all around. We walked for hours but we arrived in time for the pick up to the tombs that need a taxi to reach – but we missed the pickup.

We negotiated a 4:30 pickup but the owner of our hotel told us that we were already too late and that he was waiting nearby but he had left. We tried to negotiate for a new taxi but the prices where ridiculous at 200 SP when for a 5km distance where most of my commutes for 4 hours from one city to the next have always been around 75SP. We finally got one for 100SP and we went to the first set of tombs that were nothing special and though we were able to climb the tomb, the view was nothing special either. Next, we went to second set of tombs that were equally unremarkable and so we went home but stopped early to see the Temple of Bel , another very old walled temple with a square building with some more pillars. We ended the day ready to leave the city. It is a shame that such a place with so much beauty and history can be tainted by a people that terrorize its customers. This place is a gem covered in feces. It was a place I could have spent days wandering and relaxing but I can't handle the people here so I left back to Aleppo where I needed to get my cemetery photos again.

After getting overpriced for the ticket from Aleppo to Homs and getting threatened once for dropping a single date seed on the man in the seat in front of me, I was glad to get back to the wonderful people of Aleppo . I arrived at 2pm on Thursday checked into a local hotel and immediately headed to the cemetery. I caught a taxi there but I realized that I was in the middle of some sort of cemetery district. I wandered asking for the cemetery then a nice Christian family with one son who speaks English directed me to the site. Though the hours were Saturday to Thursday 7:00 to 17:00 , it seems that the weekend started early for the security here. I went back to the family and asked them for help. After calling a few number with no success, the 15 year old son walked me to the commonwealth cemetery, helped me break into the place by jumping the fence whereas I got all the pictures I needed and then jumped back over. I was sweating with fear over the though that I could be imprisoned in a Syrian jail, have my pants pulled down and my secret identity discovered leaving me in the hands of Syrian guards and imprisoned terrorists to show me where I dropped the soap. Luckily, the entire mission impossible went smoothly and I found myself drinking cinnamon tea, eating jam and bread and talking about Montreal with their 20 year old son who is planning to study at Concordia next year. I came home happy with my little adventure.

The next day was set for taking a bath at the local hammam, checking out the souq or market and relaxing in the Christian quarter, Citadel and drinking lots of juice but, alas, Friday is the weekend here and little was open. The Citadel was another bore and leaves little to be discussed than more rubble, more rocks and more castle on a mountain. The hammam was an interesting experience though – but I leave that for next time. I am currently in Damascus getting ready to go to Amman in a day or two. I have no itinerary and no plan but the sooner I get to Israel the sooner I have to get to work so I am procrastinating heavily. You will hear from me soon

Be well



Oren Jalon (aka Rony for those who met me here)
World Traveller