Posts tagged: syria

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. 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

One Year Older

A year ago today, I was running around a forest just outside of Paris, trying to escape from the problems to which I had awoken, feeling rather confused and unsure of where the day would lead.

For my twenty-eighth birthday, I was stood on top of Jebel Qassioun at 1200m, the mountain that overlooks Syria’s capital. This time, I didn’t question where the day would lead, but I did pose myself several questions on where this coming year would lead, as well as questioning the decisions I had made in the twelve months leading up to this point.

We had planned on hiking up the Damascus side of the mountain to go and explore what was on the other side, which turned out to be some wonderful looking mountains in the distance. As we left the barren, stony landscape to rejoin a road, we saw a sign indicating that where we had just come from was a military zone, and that there was strictly “No Entry. No Cameras”. Both rules broken then. I forget how much freedom to just roam we have back in England, and in France.

With no way to reach these mountains, we wandered back through the steep, windy streets of Damascus’ charming Salihiyya district. After meeting with other friends in the Old Town over shay and narghile, the evening was spent with a bottle of arak, followed by an Iraqi restaurant in Jaramana.

Here’s to an interesting year…