Jusqu'ici

A fitting end “Over there we’ve got some...

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:00:00 +0100

A fitting end

“Over there we’ve got some fuckin’ Yankees, and you’re a fuckin’ Brit” an old guy at Damascus’ Karajat Samariyeh said as I queued to buy my ticket for Beirut. He has one leg, fewer teeth, and talks in a broad Arabic-Brooklyn accent, having learned all his English from American sailors that were posted over here. “Fucking Al Capone style” he says, when I comment on his brogue.

Talking of the British and American troops he had met during their time in his country, he says “you Brits are so cool”, referring to the “cool & calm” nature in which we deal with things. “That’s smart”. According to him, “[the] Yanks are all fast money and fast cars”.

Fuckin’ ay.

Autoportrait — Leaving Damascus I spent three months in Syria....

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0100

Autoportrait — Leaving Damascus

I spent three months in Syria. A month traveling, a month studying, and a further month doing a bit of both. During that time I met many fascinating people, some of whom I now count amongst my friends, friendships that I really value.

Arriving back into the city from Jordan, the familiar site of Jebel Qassioun appeared before driving back down the Mezzeh highway, past the university where I spent eighty gruelling hours between November and December, and then the Old City popped up. It dawned on me how much I was going to miss the place, and the people in it.

So thank you to you Damascenes, and inshall’ah, we will meet again soon.

Once again, I don a keffiyeh, strap-on my backpack, and climb in the back of a servees bound for the bus-station. The long route to Africa will wait a little while longer; next stop, Beirut.

An Enterprising Folk I am amazed at how much stuff people...

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:00:00 +0100

An Enterprising Folk

I am amazed at how much stuff people dabble in here in Syria. This country — which gets such a bad-wrap in the international news, and is marred by a repressive autocracy — seems to foster a very free-thinking, enterprising youth.

I feel that back home, we complain that we never have time to do all the things we want, and we face much fewer barriers to whatever it is we want to do. But here — taking the example of one friend alone — is someone who at the age of twenty-five, is completing a degree, has worked as a journalist, is involved in a film-project as an assistant-director, is organising a massive cultural project, all whilst applying for international universities. Along with that, writing, drawing and painting feature as pass-times. Oh, and she’s female, in a country where it is true to say that women do not face the same freedoms as their male counterparts, and are up against social pressures based on their sex.

Males, however, do have to contend with the looming threat of military service. One Syrian friend has been advised not to follow through on his proposed subject for his film & photography studies final-piece due to the content, which is based-upon just this. And regarding his own military service, he lists his two options, once he reaches 25, as leaving the country (indefinitely), or suicide. Rather worryingly, it is the latter that he is currently contemplating.

Riddles & Recorders The approach to Petra’s...

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0100

Riddles & Recorders

The approach to Petra’s “Monastery” is a long, winding route of stone steps, made even more arduous by the constant hounding from folk lining the route proposing donkeys and trinkets and that most dubious of all offers, free shay. But arriving at the top, the sound of a flute came emanating from the huge, carved out hall within. As we got closer, this sound was mixed with the smell of hash. Inside were a couple of guys, stoned out of their mind.

The next half an hour was spent sat with them as they smoked, posed riddles and repeated the same tune — over & over — on the flute, to us and the two Israelis who rolled up. My mind had already been tuned-into Middle Eastern logic by a taxi driver’s riddles between Kahta & Mt. Nemrut in Turkey, so I earned myself some brownie points solving a couple.

All I need now is the kohl.

La grotte est à nous This is Arwhen. He is born of bedouin...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:30:00 +0100

La grotte est à nous

This is Arwhen. He is born of bedouin stock, and his family have been living in the caves of Petra for generations. Indeed, he was born in one of them. Thirty years ago, as more and more visitors came, the government constructed a village a few kilometres away, a place where all the bedouins could move to rather than inhabiting the caves. Except that these people didn’t want to live in houses in a town. They like the troglodytic life.

So despite having a house in town, Arwhen spends most of his time living out here. “It’s more peaceful” he says. In the town, there are too many people, too much noise. The traffic. Here there is nature, the stars at night. A warming fire.

For the time being, this habitation of the caves is tolerated by the government, although tourists are not permitted to stay and camp in the area, and technically, they are not allowed to stay with these people. But Arwhen will continue to seek refuge here from the hubbub of the town, once we, the tourists, have left the place for the night.

Autoportrait — Petra Whilst the tombs, façades and carvings of...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:30:00 +0100

Autoportrait — Petra

Whilst the tombs, façades and carvings of Petra are magnificent, the landscape is absolutely mind-blowing, too, and well worthy of some hiking.

…and hand-stands on cliff edges, of course.

Here begins a small series of auto-portraits.

Scarred by Tourism After having got used to taking offers of...

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:00:00 +0100

Scarred by Tourism

After having got used to taking offers of tea at face-value and happily stepping into peoples’ homes, the town of Wadi Musa came as a bit of a culture shock. The whole of the town seems to be geared-up to do one thing, and that is to provide rooms, food and souvenirs to the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit Jordan’s premier attraction: Petra.

The hotels are keen to remind you that Petra’s famous Treasury featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, playing the film every evening. But emerging from the siq, it is indeed an awesome spectacle, and indeed worthy of its fame.

Petra is an immense site, and whilst the Treasury is perhaps the largest and most ornate of the sights, the sheer number of these façades and tombs, as well as the huge effort that must have been employed to carve them out of the rock, is what I found the most amazing.

It is, however, an attraction you will pay dearly to visit. A single-day pass costs 31 JD (1 JD is roughly the same as one Euro), and this summer the price will be rising to 58 JD. Some of the guys working there (who, incidentally, invited us into their office and did offer tea without any ulterior motives), told of how the price next year will be upwards of 90 JD for a single-day pass. This is going to put it beyond the budget of most backpackers… And if you really want to discover the charm of Petra, a day is not enough. I found two days a little short.

The site itself is therefore a huge money-spinner for the country, and the people working inside will do their best to extract more money from visitors. Lining all of the main sights are a mass of faux-bedouins, plying their wares. The steps to the Monastery are lined with carts selling souvenirs, and everywhere you walk, persistent offers of a donkey/horse/camel to ride will follow.

Rain Cold Stops Play Cloud rolling in over the village of...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:00:00 +0100

Rain Cold Stops Play

Cloud rolling in over the village of Dana.

It was snowing as we walked up to Qadsiyya, 3km up the road. Snowing. In Jordan. I thought this was the Middle East?

Dana Nature Reserve A servees deposits you at the outskirts of...

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:00:00 +0100

Dana Nature Reserve

A servees deposits you at the outskirts of the small town of Qadsiyya where a road drops down to the village of Dana, which lies at the head of the valley which constitutes the heart of the Dana Nature Reserve. This is the “show-piece” of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, and is famed for its hiking as well as its wildlife and flora. Whilst Syria has got some beautiful landscapes, it doesn’t have this sort of “accessibility” to its outdoors.

The village of Dana is a collection of stone & adobe buildings seemingly cut-into the cliff-face at the end of the Dana Valley which stretches out to the desert plains on the horizon. Nowadays, the only real permanent inhabitants of the village are staff of the four hotels & hostels that provide respite from the cities and the tourist trail. The Tower Hotel is the cheapest, and its rooms are full of graffiti along the lines of “I came to Dana for one night, and ended up staying for 11”. I came for a couple and stayed three… Maybe if the weather wasn’t so bad for the last couple of days, it would have been longer.

The visitor centre of the reserve has very little information about the hiking on offer, the staff saying that “you need a guide” for most of it. Pft. All you need is a sense of direction, a pic-nic, and some strong calf-muscles for the steep climb back up to the village from the valley floor at the end of the day.

The Road to Wadi Mujib The notion of going to where you can get...

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0100

The Road to Wadi Mujib

The notion of going to where you can get to, rather than finding a way to get to where you want to go, is a luxury rarely afforded back home. I had wanted to get to Dana, but on a Friday — the Muslim day of rest — there were no buses going that way. When I then asked “where can I get to today?”, the question seemed lost on the locals and I was just told to go back to Amman to get other buses from there. Taxis offered the ride at an exorbitant rate.

I noticed “Dhiban” written in Arabic on the side of a bus that was slowly filling up with people. The map showed that it lies on the northern edge of Wadi Mujib, Jordan’s “Grand Canyon”, and in vaguely the right direction. That would do.

This change of plan meant a new acquaintance in a bus rarely used to seeing foreigners; after a phone call to his wife back home, extra places were being prepared for lunch in a little village somewhere north of Dhiban.

The lift back to the town that afternoon was in his friend’s mini-van, filled with veiled women who giggled away in the back on their way to a wedding. “You cannot look at them”, our driver told me as they spoke to me. The umpteenth cultural lesson of that day.

Walking down the winding road into the wadi (“valley” in Arabic) evening was beginning to draw in, and passing drivers warned of the danger in the valley bottom at night. The “wolves” they had warned of were avoided thanks to four retired men, dressed in full Jordanian garb, who stopped to offer a lift as the sun was setting. A fitting end to a day of improvised traveling, and proof that where you want to go is not always the best place to be.

Free tea sans the carpet-selling Whilst the main reason to come...

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:00:00 +0100

Free tea sans the carpet-selling

Whilst the main reason to come to Madaba is for the Byzantine-era mosaics, it was wandering the market streets & quartiers populaire that I enjoyed most. The town centre seemed too shiny and new, rather fake, with its shops catering to the tourist crowd. Carpet anyone?

Walking back one evening, surrounded by a gaggle of young teenagers gabbling away in Arabic (and me trying to understand & reply), a mini-van pulled up. “There is a cup of tea waiting for you at my house” said the driver, his wife sat behind him.

Ten minutes later we entered a house in a southern district of the town, met the rest of the family, and enjoyed a delicious, sweet, milky, spiced local-style chai. Like most Arabic homes I have visited, they had a television blaring away, and when the Turkish pop-music came on, their seven year old son duly danced along for the benefit of everyone present.

The house had had several storeys added to it over the year as the family grew and finances permitted. He proclaimed the importance of having his family close to him; each of the storeys corresponded to one of his children and their future family. This addition of storeys meant that from the roof, there was “the best view of Madaba” with the church spires & mosques’ minarets rising up under the stars.

The Jordanians, it seems, are just as hospitable and keen to entertain foreigners as their Syrian counter-parts. And this time, there were no dodgy questions questions in the ride back.

The Abtouqs of King Hussein Camp Walking into the dingy...

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:00:00 +0100

The Abtouqs of King Hussein Camp

Walking into the dingy corridor of a small house nestled amongst the steep, narrow alleys that criss-cross the Palestinian refugee camp on Amman’s Jebal King Hussein, I’m not quite sure if I feel comfortable or not. I had met 47 year-old Kamal minutes before, chain-smoking through yellowed teeth, as he stood on the steps outside his house. Upon learning I was British he told me how he once loved a British lady he had met in Lebanon, but that was a long time ago, and nothing had come of his affection.

He invited me in to take a tea and to meet his family. Through the doorway from the hallway came the sound of the Qur’an being read on television, a channel that I had seen many times before in the restaurants and cafés of Syria. In this room his father sat on a chair at the foot of his wife’s bed; she was recovering from a broken leg and so her life passed in this room. I initially hesitated as I entered; the father moaned & beat his chest, and I wasn’t sure that I was very welcome here. My fears, however, turned out to be totally unfounded. His “moans” were actually expressing “very nice to meet you”; seven years ago he had suffered a stroke which left him paralysed down one side, and with problems speaking.

This man had trained as an accountant in Lebanon, and had had a successful job, traveling all over the world thanks to his knowledge of business and his English skills. He comes from Jaffa, near Tel-Aviv, but was forced to leave in 1948 with the creation of Israel. He has since lived in this refugee camp with his family, and what was once a good standard of living has given away to relative dilapidation.

Kamal’s brother, Mahmoud, joined us and acted as a translator for his father. His father evidently understood everything I said, but his mind had trouble finding the words he wanted, and his body prevented them from expressing them. Both Kamal & Mahmoud had inherited some of their father’s English, and when they successfully explained his slurred Arabic to me, they were followed by emphatic cries of Aywa! Aywa! (“yes” in Arabic). When he couldn’t express himself, he tried to incite his words to come-out by slapping his forehead.

On the side-table next to his chair lay a photograph of the family at a hotel in downtown Amman when his now middle-aged offspring were still children, Kamal beaming at the camera. The hotel is now out of business, and Kamal, in particular, shows little hope for his life. He is evidently depressed at having reached his age without having raised a family; he asks me “who is more beautiful? Me or Brad Pitt?”. Did I think he would have a chance with Angelina Jolie, or Katie Holmes? Hollywood hasn’t passed him by, whilst he feels his life has.

Jordan offered citizenship to the Palestinians who arrived in 1948 & 1967, as Mahmoud testifies as he shows me his Jordanian passport. But whilst he is classed as a Jordanian citizen, his family still lives in the UN Refugee camp that was created here as a result of the huge waves of immigrants who fled Palestine during the wars there, and the quality of life is fairly minimal.

The Abtouqs are still suffering from the double-dealing that the British undertook following the Balfour Treaty, from the repercussions of the failed British mandate in Palestine. But the welcome they afforded me in their little house in Amman didn’t show any rancour of my nationality. The most important thing I could do, Mahmoud told me, is to tell people I know that “We Palestinians don’t hate Jews, like the media says. Our problem is with the Zionists. Jews & Arabs have lived together for many years.” They just need to get back a quality of life, one that cannot exist whilst they are still living as refugees.

Seven Hills I love cities built on hills. Amman’s Jebel...

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0100

Seven Hills

I love cities built on hills. Amman’s Jebel Hussein appears as a mass of haphazard grey or ochre, concrete buildings, each piled upon another. I can’t help but compare it to the ordered rows of red-bricked terrace houses of Sheffield’s industrial-revolution period, working class houses. A similar demographic, but a very different aesthetic.

Yet rather than being attracted to the city with the promise of work in the factory, the people here were forced from their land in what-was-then Palestine. Push-, rather than pull-, migration, I suppose.

The New Downtown of Amman Crossing any border involving Syria...

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:00:00 +0100

The New Downtown of Amman

Crossing any border involving Syria seems to also involve smuggling. The driver of the shared taxi I took handed me several packets of duty-free cigarettes to stuff into my jacket as we were waved through into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Maybe he felt I owed him one for the wait that was incurred once the staff issuing the visas saw the Iranian stamps in my passport. It promptly disappeared out back for half an hour before they granted me leave to enter the country.

Arriving into Amman from Damascus initially came as quite a culture shock. The place is undergoing a huge amount of construction. The skeletons of buildings take form, cranes dominate the skyline, and everything seems all very new. I had grown used to the absence of occidental chains in Syria. McDonalds, Starbucks, Toni & Guy; Amman has it all, so to speak.

The military also reflect the Western dollars in the country. The army & guards in Syria are usually quite a scruffy affair, brandishing tattered old machine guns, and often in an equally tattered old leather jacket. Not so in Jordan. The army here keep their boots shined and their fire-power reflects the $464 million of US economic assistance they receive. (2006 figure.) The machine guns were of the M-16 variety (as opposed to that of a Kalashnikov), and it wasn’t unusual to see a jeep with an oh-my-god-look-at-the-size-of-that gun bolted to the roof. No messing here.

The place is full of contrasts, and there is still a lot of poverty. These new developments I speak of sit on one side of the hill, and the other side houses the pre-fab buildings of the refugees and the poor. Somewhere in the middle sits Downtown, where its older buildings house (fake) DVD shops, jewellers galore and some pleasant little humus joints & narghile cafés, along-side the odd Roman ruin.

In Search of Solitude Another reason for wanting to spend some...

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:00:00 +0100

In Search of Solitude

Another reason for wanting to spend some time up in the monastery was to retreat from the bustle of the city a little, and to reflect on the coming months. Some people take this as far as taking residence in one of the numerous caves that are carved into the cliffs above the monastery, for meditation & reflection.

Me, I ran to the hills. Escaping with my thoughts and deliberation on what I was doing, and what I would do. But at times, it was a physical escape I sought, and so found myself running down the ridges of the mountains, and scrambling up the rocky outcrops. Several times, this involved some fully-fledged climbing, which turned-out to be a little more than I had bargained for, particularly in hiking boots.

At one point, around ten metres up, a piece of rock came away in my hand. I tried not to think of what would have happened had I fallen with it. I vowed not to take any more stupid risks like this.

An hour later, I reneged on my promise, and found myself bouldering again. This time, a whole slab or rock—from which I was hauling myself up with both hands—came away. I fell along with it, but managed to push myself away from under its path.

Had I found religion at Mar Musa, I would have said that He was definitely looking out for me that day. Instead, I put it down to luck.

Community Service The monastery at Deir Mar Musa dates back...

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:00:00 +0100

Community Service

The monastery at Deir Mar Musa dates back about fifteen-hundred years, to 586 AD. In the 19th century, the place was abandoned, and it stayed this way until its refoundation in 1982 by Fr. Paolo.

The monastery receives so many visitors now that a new monastery is under construction, the other side of the river gorge. Parts of it are already inhabited by the community there, but there is still work to be done.

Due to its location, several hundred metres up from the road, the materials are transferred up to the monastery by a sort of téléphérique. During my time there, I spent a morning with one of the workers, shifting a couple of tons of rocks to be transported up to the new monastery. A bit of manual labour felt good.

Divinity Another reason for staying at the monastery is the...

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:00:00 +0100

Divinity

Another reason for staying at the monastery is the goats’ cheese that the monks produce. It is divine.

A few of us hiked up to the local goat farm one day, and arrived just as a nanny-goat was giving birth to her kid. As well as the chèvre, the milk that these goats produce goes on to make lebneh and some sort of clotted curd, too. All of which goes very well with the local apricot jam.

Looking for God (دير مار موسى) As we drove through the desert...

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:15:00 +0100

Looking for God (دير مار موسى)

As we drove through the desert hills, the guy who had picked me up on the road between Al Nebek and the Deir Mar Musa el-Habashi asked me if I was Christian, seeming puzzled when I replied in the negative. “Muslim?” he asked me. “I’m still looking” I replied. Religion is a question one is often asked in the Middle East, and many a time I have replied with the truthful, yet nebulous “I was brought up an Anglican”. Atheism is often not something that people take too kindly too. “So what are you doing here?” he asked, still puzzled. In fact, what exactly was I doing there, coming to this monastery hidden in some arid mountains? It’s not something I had considered whilst casting a religious light on the question.

I had heard that this ecumenical monastery and the community which exists there, is something rather special. Père Paolo Dall’Oglio, the Father of the monastery, was reputed as quite a character. The title of one of his books, “Amoureux de l’Islam, croyant en Jésus” (In love with Islam, believing in Jesus) suggests the peculiar nature of this monastery, where different denominations mix freely, and Islam is revered.

I had come partly to experience this community life — everybody collectively preparing meals, cleaning and maintaining the monastery — and partly to witness the dramatic setting, and rather paradoxically, the solitude. The monastery sits isolated, amongst seem steep cliffs in a river-carved valley, 1320m above sea level, seemingly at the top of as many steps.

I had plenty of things to contemplate during my stay, but the question of my faith (or rather lack of it) largely eclipsed those other preoccupations, particularly during the one-hour long meditations that are held every night in the chapel, and the Mass that follows it. Everybody forming part of this (sometimes ephemeral) community is encouraged to partake in these events.

I had also heard that people get “sucked-in” to the life in the monastery, initially coming for a few days and leaving several weeks later. Tony, my co-traveler for the first month in Syria, was an example of this. Whilst I was there, I met a couple of tourists who had visited for the night, but the majority of people outside the formal community of monks, nuns and novices, had been there for several weeks already, some opting to volunteer for periods of six-months or a year. As I left, in the back of a truck that had picked me up as I walked back towards al-Nebek, I though I would be back to join their ranks^*.

^* Later decisions regarding my progress towards Africa means that this is no longer the case.

Stranger Danger Damascus can be a strange place. This dead...

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 02:30:00 +0100

Stranger Danger

Damascus can be a strange place. This dead chicken sat atop a dilapidated old Peugeot was a portent to events of the evening to come.

At the end of a rather amusing soirée with some friends in their beautiful, traditional Arabic house, it was time to catch a servees back to Jaramana. I stood at an intersection, rapidly trying to read the Arabic of the passing micro-buses’ destinations before they passed, failing to find one marked “Jaramana”. Even at 2am, I rarely wait longer than a few minutes.

A long, cold twenty minutes later, I was feeling a little dispirited, and then a van reversed back up to me, offering a lift. The “Don’t get into strangers’ vehicles” message that was drummed-in twenty years ago was far from my mind. Here I was, in Syria, climbing into the cab of a strange, unknown man, on the hope of my limited Arabic having understood him to be going back to Jaramana, not thinking twice about it.

This man was indeed strange, and the conversation began with him asking me if I liked Syrian girls. Not the ideal starter for ten, as I wondered if an answer in affirmative might be interpreted as the sign of a womanising Westerner… Things rapidly got worse, with questions about my promiscuity in his country (zero), my experience with prostitutes (zero), and my desire to experience both together, tonight (zero).

I didn’t have the vocabulary to understand his question regarding the size of what was between my legs, and as he gesticulated and eventually reached across to my lap, I feared the price of this ride home might be somewhat more physical than monetary.

When asked what I thought of sleeping with men, he laudably told me that it was great; this in a country where the public position is that homosexuality “doesn’t exist”, and is indeed prohibited, and where prosecution can lead to imprisonment.

As we approached my district, he became more insistent that we get “ithnayn binat” (two girls), an experience I was adamant I was not going to engage in. I managed to descend with my Syrian virginity still intact, and as I walked home reflected on how stupid I had been, but at the same time, chuckling to myself about the ridicule of the situation.

Sayyida Ruqayya (جامع السيدة الرقية) Visiting another Iranian...

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:30:00 +0100

Sayyida Ruqayya (جامع السيدة الرقية)

Visiting another Iranian mosque, this time in Damascus’ Old Town, housing the mausoleum of Ruqayya bint al-Hussein ash-Shaheed bi-Kerbala, a Shi’ite Saint that attracts many pilgrims.