Covered up in Aleppo

I’ve read an old saying somewhere that says all roads lead to Damascus. Our road from Jordan took us to Damascus and onto Aleppo. We decided not to stay in Damascus because of all we had read and seen either on TV or the Internet about the unrest and protests in Syria. Don’t believe everything seen on either of those media. As the taxi took us so tantalizingly close to the old city of Damascus we saw a group of older tourists wandering happily along the street. I watched them with envy as we carried onto the bus station to catch our bus to Aleppo.

After a few days of debate and indecision we had decided to go from Jordan straight up to Aleppo in the north of Syria. Aleppo is only 2 hours from the Turkish border and a day away from Cappadocia our last stop before heading back to Tuatara at Finike. Aleppo vies with Damascus as the world’s oldest city a little compensation for missing Damascus and other places we had planned to visit in Syria.

We arranged a service taxi to take us over the border from Amman to Damascus, this is a popular way to pass between the two countries for locals and travelers. Busses can also be taken but if someone has a problem with visa then the whole bus is delayed. All four of us have NZ passports, one of the easiest passports in the world to travel on. Syria does not have an embassy in New Zealand so we can get Visas at the Syrian border while other travelers need to get theirs from their home country. Some people turn up at the border hoping to get a visa on the spot but it is not unusual for them to be turned away, some try over several days and with luck they eventually get a sympathetic officer who gives them that long awaited stamp. Our Aussie friends got theirs within 15 minutes even though there is a Syrian embassy in Canberra, so it depends on the officer on the day. Our only hiccup was that the cashier, for paying our $US108 pp visa fee to, was AWOL from his office. The Immigration officers indicatated that we should look on the floor behind his desk, after all it was only 8am, still early! There was a bed there but it was empty. An officer was sent off to look for him and some phoning was done, everyone seemed a bit bewildered as to his whereabouts, they shrugged their shoulders and indicated we needed to wait. Eventually we saw two men approaching carrying a bed frame, these were the men we were waiting for. They maneuvered the frame into the small office, picked up the bedding arranged the bed, one picked up his jacket and left, (change of shift). The new shift sat on his chair, got his breath back, tidied his desk found the appropriate paper work , then he was ready for us!!! 5 minutes for the Immigration officer to approve our visa and 15 minutes waiting to pay for it. The Jordan border process was quite polished with officers looking as polished as their process, the Syrian officers looked more disheveled a bit like their border process.

The Jordanian service taxis can only go to the outskirts of Damascus, our guy dropped us where “my friend” met us and for an exorbitant price took us through Damascus, past the old city and on to the bus station to catch a bus for Aleppo. During that “taxi” ride from one side of Damascus to the other we did not see any excess of police, army or protestors. It appeared to be business as usual. Admittedly later in the day as the bus drove past the city of Homs we saw a few men standing on the side of the road and some army vehicles but no action. So not sure what that was all about. After a long day we arrived at Aleppo bus station to be greated by a posse of taxi drivers all wanting to take us to their favourite hotel. Because of the lack of tourists in Syria now those of us that were there got more attention than we really needed or could handle. Taxis are small so even for 4 of us we needed 2 taxis, a price was agreed and off we went.

“no we don’t want 5 star, 2 or 3 star is fine”

“You pay 90Euro”

“no, no too much, we are poor New Zealanders, not American or German”

We eventually turned up at the first place, we had agreed he would show us 3 places, for the cost of the taxi. It wasn’t a hotel, Marion and I went to inspect, the dingy stairs didn’t give a good impression. The door of the apartment opened and we stepped into a very nice 2 bedroom apartment, complete with kitchen. That sold us we could make our own cups of tea and coffee. No wifi but excellent satellite TV, we could watch the news and movies in English for a change. We settled on an excellent price, 3000SYP per night ($NZ45 per couple per night), an extra bit of baksheesh to our self appointed guide from the bus station, taxi drivers paid and we sat down to relax, safely in Aleppo.

In Aleppo we wandered the Christian area, the Armenian church was having its Sunday service, we listened to the singing and sermon as we wandered through their small museum. We wound our way through quiet narrow cobbled streets, found lovely warm chocolate croissants just when our stomachs were starting to complain. We eventually found our way out of the quiet Sunday of Al-Jdeida into the noisy, busy Souq al-Attarine and its many Khans. The Souq has burst the seams of the original 13th century area which runs over a kilometer from Bab Antakya to the Citadel. We had lunch overlooking the mosque and watched the comings and goings into the mosque and trading in the nearby street. Below us were small stalls of mushrooms, shoes and mens pants, at the mosque entrance ugly looking skirts and head scarves were handed out to women who didn’t meet the strict dress code. In many muslim countries trousers are ok for women to wear into the mosque but not in Aleppo. Muslim woman turning up fully covered only faces showing but with trousers had to cover up with a long baggy white skirt. We watched as one fully clad black burkah covered mother remonstrated with her trouser wearing teenage daughter over that ugly skirt. Any mother from any country could have worked out what was going on between mother and daughter. The teenage daughter was not going to be seen dead in that ugly skirt, she was NOT going into the mosque with that THING on. After some pacing around by both mother and daughter, mother eventually won out. Nice to know teenagers are the same the world over. After lunch Alan and I went into the mosque I was handed that skirt and head covering to wear, I have complete sympathy with that young girl! I did get some sympathetic smiles and “welcome to Syria” from women inside the mosque.

Wandering through the Souq, getting lost in the labyrinth of cobblestone alley ways took up the rest of the day. We passed carpets, jewellery, pashminas, glitzy wedding dresses, sexy night attire, spices, shoes, sheesha pipes, butchers, in fact most things you want or don’t want could be found there. A camel carcass hung up outside a butchers’, its hump split open to show that it consists entirely of fat. The unskinned head and neck hung nearby with two of its feet casually slung on the ground like a discarded pair of slippers. After seeing camels swaying their way across the desert I wasn’t surprised to see the two thick ropes of muscle protruding out of its hairy neck. A few shops down we came across a couple of Syrian/Aussie brothers, quite a double act, happy to chat and banter, one with a laugh I will never forget. They seemed to be the only shop owners who didn’t want us to buy something, more interested in a chat and a laugh.

“Pashmina, pure silk, lady just come look.”

“Where you from? Welcome to Syria, come to my jewelery shop it is just around the corner.”

“Madam please just look.”

“Welcome to my carpet shop.”

Between the President and the protestors the affect on tourism has been disastrous for Syrians and in a way not so great for the tourists either. A loose, loose situation. We stood out and were at the mercy of all the souvenir and carpet sellers, there wasn’t enough travelers to spread the load, so to speak. But some good bargains could be had. Interestingly most of the travelers and tour groups consisted of older people in their 50s ,60s and older. We saw very few young backpackers, either not the right time of year or youngsters take more notice of travel warnings! We met a whole bus load of New Zealanders at Serjilla, one of the dead cities out from Aleppo. We don’t often meet other NZers and to meet a whole bus load was a nice surprise. They were spending 3 weeks in Syria and said they had already been to Damascus, they had felt safe there as well as having enjoyed the old city. I didn’t want to hear that!!

On our second day in Aleppo we visited the Citadel which sits atop a man made hill overlooking the city. The area around Aleppo is quite flat so to have effective fortifications overlooking the city a hill had to be built first. The first fortifications were built on the site between 364BC-333BC, but what survives today was mainly built between 1250 and 1517. The Muslims held out against the Crusaders, the huge moat helped to keep out those 12 century invaders. The 360 view of modern day Aleppo from the top of the citadel shows a sprawling city. The old city at the feet of the Citadel spreads out gradually changing to modern buildings with a glimpse out through the haze to wheat fields on the very edge.

After the citadel we walked through the souk again, managed to come across the same camel, only half left but still lots of camel dinners left. Alan and Brian decided to go off for a Turkish bath, leaving Marion and I to wander through the streets back to the apartment. I don’t think I have seen so many lingerie shops in all my life, every one with lingerie one would see in sex shops in most western countries. For a country which on the surface looks very strict, woman stumble through the streets with complete veils no eyes even showing, they have some interesting lingerie/ sex toys on show. The veiled ladies have to lift their thick black veils up to look at the skimpy fur trimmed bras and knickers making sure the male shop keeper doesn’t glimpse their face even though he knows what they may be barely wearing when they get home. I am still not used to seeing men only selling everything from bras to slinky dresses in the market or glitzy up market shops.

We arranged a day tour out of Aleppo to Qala’At Samaan ( Basilica of St Simeon) and the Dead cities of Al-Bara and Serjilla. It was good to get out of Aleppo for a day and see something of the surrounding countryside, green wheat fields, goat and sheep flocks, olive trees, fruit trees in blossom, spring flowers and of course ruins. The Basilica of St Simeon was built around the pillars St Simeon, an early Syrian Christian, spent his life on. He decided monastery life was not quite what he wanted so he retreated to a cave, but when people sought him out for blessings he resented the invasion of privacy and ended up living on top of pillars, shouting his sermons down to his pilgrims. His pillars got taller as he became more eccentric, the last one being supposedly 18m high. After he died in 459 a huge church was built around the pillar, unfortunately there is not much left of the pillar as Christian pilgrims chipped off bits to take home, so nothing more than a boulder is left amongst the arches and domes that are left of the Basilica. Spring flowers were sprinkled amongst the fallen columns and under the huge arches, a peaceful place in a busy if somewhat uneasy country. The ruins look out over the Syrian fields and to the north the hills of Turkey can be seen. Not sure how St Simeon coped on his pillar when the cold north wind swept down from Turkey in the winter.

To visit this part of the world you need to be interested in history and have a high tolerance for visiting ruins. Alan moans but each time he comes away pleased to have visited and has usually found something to marvel at. After St Simeon we traveled to the south of Aleppo to the Dead cities, these are towns that were abandoned some as long ago as 15 centuries ago. Why they were abandoned has not been conclusively decided but they are interesting to walk around.

Our short visit to Syria had come to an end, what we saw we liked, but there is so much more to see in Syria. We felt safe the entire time, day and night, no sign of unrest but I guess it is there, simmering under the surface. As westerners we always felt welcome, people were interested and impressed about where we had come from. As the Syrian immigration officer slowly typed our details into the computer and stamped the exit stamp in our passport, I felt a little disappointed at leaving after such a short visit. We had neither seen nor encountered any problems but things in Syria will probably get worse before they get better, so better safe than sorry. Some day I hope my road leads back to Damascus so I can visit the oldest city in the world.