East in the desert

South-east of Deir lies Dura Europos, and further along the road, Mari, just near the Iraqi border. A service bus dropped us on the Mari turn-off of the highway, a short walk from the ruins of this ancient Mesopotamian city. The site consists of the dug-out remains of a mud-brick city which dates back around 5000 years.

Dura Europos was not, as the name suggests, a European theme-park, but a huge fortress guarding over the Euphrates, marking the edge of the Alexandrian empire.

We were deposited a kilometre from the castle walls around sunset, with a road stretching over the quasi-desert. The view of the outer walls was astounding - the width of the site is huge. I cannot imagine how many people it must have taken to defend it. As we arrived at the great door, the caretaker was just closing-up for the night, but David managed to convince him to let us in. We would just have to climb the fence to get out again.

Inside, the area enclosed by the walls is immense, bounded to the west by the walls, and to the east, the cliffs that drop down into the Euphrates. In the distance we could see the flames rising from the oil-extracting derricks, and somewhere on the horizon was Iraq.

It was night by the time we made it back to the highway, miles from anywhere, watching approaching headlights hoping it would be a service bus to take us back to Deir.

Villageois

Spending a day on sarha - walking around the countryside - provided a nice break from the bustle of the city. Crossing over the grand suspension bridge spanning the Euphrates, this river upon whose banks some of the world’s oldest continually habited civilisations have grown, the bustle of Deir Ez-Zour is left behind. Leaving the road, the buildings give way to farmland where people were in the midst of picking the white buds of cotton from their red leaves.

Heading seemingly into nothing — the fields stretching out to the hills on the horizon — we passed the last house of a village, where a middle-aged man was sat on a plastic chair in his field, surrounded by his four children. Syrian hospitality soon had us sat beside him, his eldest son bringing over syrupy shai whilst we relished the midday sun. Our absence of Arabic somewhat stifled the conversation, but we sat contentedly observing the scene, our host inviting over the occasional passer-by, “we have shai!” he seemed proud to say.

The countryside was occasionally broken by little collections of low houses, where women cooked, children played, and dogs barked, warning us off their territory.

As we entered one village, we were stopped by a group of men who stood before their house whilst the women were preparing bread. The ovens were placed between the house & the road, making this a very social affair as they stretched out the dough & subsequently patting it into the roofs of the wood-fuelled kilns. It was reassuring to see the integration of the women, to see them smiling & participating in this encounter with two strange foreigners, and not excluded behind the rather complex cultural conventions of the country.

Shai was practically forced upon us as we sat with them, and a boy was soon running over with two freshly-baked galettes. Sixty people, spanning three or four generations lived in the house. They all seemed surprised, and rather bemused, by the fact that we were just out walking, and had come from Deir Ez-Zour to find ourselves here. As we left, two more warm discs of bread were thrust into our backpack. Had it not been for a meeting later with David & Mohammed, I would have gladly taken-up their offer to stay the night with them.

We tried to make it back to the city before sunset but passing through this village, every time we encountered someone, there was the ritual of civilities to engage in, & the uncomfortable refusal of constant offers of al-kawa & shai. We passed by the Euphrates at twilight, the green lights illuminating mosques, setting them out against the deep purple sky.

More photos in this flickr set.

All eyes on Deir Ez-Zour (دير الزور)

The night bus from Damascus drops you into the eastern desert town of Deir Ez-Zour at 5am. Two kilometres separates the bus station from the town centre, and despite the protests of the local taxi drivers to the contrary, we were happy to walk after having spendt the night in the bus.

Whenever we mentioned our intentions of going to Deir, people often replied with: “Why? There is nothing there!” After a hectic couple of days in Damascus, this was exactly what we needed.

The town has a very different atmosphere from the other places we had visited in Syria. It is still vibrant & bustling, but in a rather insular way. They don’t get many foreigners up here, apart from Iraqis passing through on their way to Damascus. Those that do come often get followed by the “secret police” (although we are assured that this is for our safety), and every time we took a bus, we had to register our details, even for the small service buses. This process of keeping tabs on our location was complicated by the fact that we were staying not in a hotel, but with a friend of Tony’s. Confused, questioning looks result when trying to explain this, “no hotel” being the only words understood.

David works up in Deir for a French NGO helping Syrian businesses develop, and lives with Mohammed, an adorable Syrian guy, in his arab-style house. Our first evening staying there, we had a rendezvous with Mohammed. Upon arriving, we soon found ourselves speeding through Deir’s streets in a blacked-out Mercedes, on our way to a restaurant overlooking the Eurphrates to watch the vehement Algeria-Egypt play-off.

Sat watching the match, Mohammed received a call from a policeman who subsequently came to the restaurant enquiring about our stay. He was apparently more concerned with our safety and whether we were happy here, but despite this I feared that we were causing Mohammed unnecessary complications. This would not be the last phone call he would receive.

These inquiries regarding our happiness were somewhat superfluous: we were sat heartily cheering for Algeria (although against a back-drop of Egyptian supporters) whilst sipping some delicious bollo (a drink made with mint, lemon & sugar) surrounded by a cloud of narghile smoke. The biggest danger we faced was the disappointment of the Egyptian supporters in the room, whose team was denied the chance to go to South Africa in 2010. (There is a lot of antagonism between Algeria & Egypt, as Egyptian television would later testify, and this match epitomised the tension.)

As we left, Mohammed waved off the bill. Syrian hospitality really is something else. Merci David, شكرن Mohammed.

Apamea (أفاميا)

Looking west out of the service bus from Hama to these ruins, the horizon is dominated by some beautiful little mountains which rise out of the Al-Ghab plain. They then form the backdrop to the 1800 metre long Roman colonnade of Apamea whose fluted columns & temple remains stretch across the hillside. Between the colonnade & the mountains, another hill rises up which is crowned by castle walls which now contains a densely populated little enclave of rural life.

Arriving rather early there was no-one around and so the guy working in the ticket booth was rather chatty. He told us that they believe to have only uncovered & re-erected around 10% of the ruins, and how they need to preserve the castle, too, which would involve the removal of the people living inside.

This land was given to the local populace whilst the region was still under French rule, and now the government is in a legal black-hole, effectively faced with a situation of having to evict them. As we later walked inside its labyrinth of streets & passages, the difficultly of the situation is evident. The community is thriving. We were followed by children, inquisitive to our purpose here, who evidently see little of the groups of tourists who come to visit the colonnade a couple of kilometres away.

Sitting down to lunch in Qala’at al-Mudiq we were invited over to the table soon-to-be hajji and his family. He would later leave for Mecca, and the family were eating together before his departure. Our notions of Arabic were meagre, but the son of the family spoke a little English and, with the aid of his elder sister whispering phrases into his ear, managed to maintain the conversation. It was interesting to have this interaction with a family unit, and see the (indirect) engagement of the mother & daughter.

Friday Sermon

The clarity of the call to prayer on a Friday makes its week-day counterparts sound like amateurs. I don’t know if it is actually louder, or if it is just that there is less traffic to mute it.

Whilst passing a mosque somewhere in Hama, a speaker was broadcasting not the usual Allahu akbar of the call to prayer, but the sermon that was taking place inside.

His reading occasionally gave way to the singing of some passages; I don’t know if he was preaching directly from them Qur’an, or whether the imam was reading his own words.