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.

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 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 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.