Posts tagged: landscape

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

Maalula (معلول)

2010 began in Maalula, a small village that is butted-up against cliff-faces bearing crosses and housing little caves and tombs. This village of 5000 people is the last bastion of Aramaic, the ancient language of Jesus Christ, a language which is dying.

I met a Syrian teacher of Aramaic who told me of a well-equipped centre that was built here. The government backed a plan to promote the language, but like so many things in Syria, the project has stalled. The similarities between the alphabet and that of Hebrew was an influencing factor.

Other circumstances threaten the village, like the lack of secondary school, which means that families often move to Damascus in search of a better education & therefore future for their children. Desertification is threatening much of the arable land. Several years ago, vines grew on the slopes of these foothills of Jebel Libnan ash-Sharqiyya.

Nevertheless, a French-based NGO is working here and in the process of developing the region. With funding sourced, and much of the red-tape having been cut through, it will be interesting to see how they progress. In addition to the convents, monasteries & churches for which the village attracts some guide-book acclaim, the landscape around Maalula has much to offer, too.

A time for resolution

Around a dinner table on the 30th of December, some French friends and I were trying (with little success) to decide what to do for the New Year. They left at 1am, and ten minutes later I received a call saying “shall we go to Maalula?” - I immediately replied in the affirmative. Rendez-vous at 9:30am.

Having rented an apartment from a friend of David’s, a party was had to see in the New Year. Some Syrian friends came up from Damascus for the night, bringing arak, a narghile and with fireworks being produced at midnight. Childhood memories of televised Bonfire Night safety campaigns came to mind as rockets were fired from hands and we threw small petards at each other on the balcony.

New Year’s Day was spent hiking in the wonderful hills surrounding Maalula towards the snow-capped mountains in the distance. Our walk saw us scrambling up little cliff-faces, crossing arid plains, and descending into lush, valleyed oases. It took the moonlight to see us back into Maalula, having underestimated the 30km (or so) loop we ended up taking, the illuminated crosses on the cliff-face guiding us home. What was initially to be New Year’s Eve in Maalula turned into a three day break, hiking and climbing with some great people.

Getting out of the city was refreshing, and during the time in the hills I spent a lot of time mulling things over. The trip really gave me back the taste of traveling, and put in question my Damascene intermission. We’ll see what these next few weeks bring as 2010 begins in the heart of the Middle East.

Scene from Chez Moi (باب توما)

For my first month here, I’m renting a room from a Syrian family in Damascus’ Old City. The city walls play host to most of the University populace, it seems.

This is the view from my roof, away from the bustle of the narrow streets below. In our courtyard, the muezzins’ ezan converges five times a day from several surrounding mosques. Their watches are a few minutes apart, but they eventually crescendo before the first call reaches the final line, confirming la llah ila Allah - “there is no God but Allah”.

On the horizon of the photo is Jebel Qassioun, limiting the sprawl at the northern edge of city, rising above the pollution.

As night falls, the Damascene nights get pretty cold; I’ve taken to sleeping in my sleeping bag under the blankets. The 7am dash to the shower across the terrace is still chilly, but by the time I eat breakfast, the sun is touching a corner of it, allowing me to eat en terrasse.

Most houses have a big water tank on the roof, holding reserves. The drinking water here shuts off at 2pm for the day, so filling bottles is my little morning ritual - I’m determined not to rely on bottled water after seeing its effects on the beaches at Tartous & Lattakia.