Yes, we’re leaving. Syria is in mourning. To help the nation get over it, we’re not leaving by plane but by train, on a sort of farewell tour if you will. From Damascus we go to Aleppo in the north. And from Aleppo we take a 30 hour train (where there is apparently no food or water provided, yippee) to Istanbul. Where we link up with the pride of Britain, Easyjet, for a return flight to beautiful and historic Luton.
In our last month here, we did a little tour of Jordan, when I abandoned my principles and got behind the wheel of a massive 4x4 with two vast petrol tanks. Mr A realised he still obviously looks 12 years old, judging by the number of strange looks he got driving it across the border. We visited the ancient city of Petra (of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade fame) where we rode two farting donkeys up about 500 extremely precarious steps to see a ruined monastery – the donkeys were determined to overtake each other on hairpin corners overhanging 100 foot drops, which made it quite an eventful ride. Walking down in 45 degree heat was pretty tiring, so we felt sorry for the larger German lady struggling up on her own. We would have recommended she take a donkey but we suspect the Bedu didn’t want to risk losing one under the strain.
We also toured Wadi Rum (of Lawrence of Arabia fame) in the 4x4 with a Bedu tour guide. I cautioned Mr A to drive slowly to preserve the environment and avoid disturbing the desert tranquillity. But eventually our guide demanded the keys to what was obviously one of the more fun cars he’d been in that week – and he drove us round the various sites at about 70mph, handbrake turning around sand dunes. And finally we swam in the Dead Sea after caking ourselves in strange grey mud. The water feels more like salty oil really, but still, the floating sensation is quite amazing, kind of like being a spaceman. It does make sleazing a lot easier, as slimy men have obviously discovered through practice that women are unable to swim away from them as they ask questions like “Why don’t you want to talk to me? I’m just saying you’re beautiful! You’re Russian? My father went to Ukraine once!”
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Back in Syria, I bought a dead cow’s back from the leather market here, and made the whole house stink of dead animal. The idea was to make a bag out of it, but in the end I have traced the patterns of the leaves in our garden and cut out lots of small leather leaves. Obviously.
While I was away, Mr A spent a rather crazy weekend in a Syrian friend’s village about 4 hours drive from Damascus. It was the very definition of ‘immersion’ training – he was forced to wear a jalabia for the most of the weekend, including while taking a motorcycle tour of the region, pretend to smoke a cigarette through a hollow branch (still no idea what the point was), eat enough to feed a family, drink probably 25 cups of Arabic coffee, and explain at least 10 times why he had so far failed to conceive a child. (“But I have been married for only three years and I have six children!”) It was all very good for the Arabic as no-one in the family spoke a word and he heard new usages, such as “ALLAH!!”, shouted in expectation of impending doom by his friend’s elderly mother every time he went over a speed bump while driving.
He also spent a couple of hours at a Christian festival, held on the first day of Ramadan. While the rest of the country was solemnly fasting and abstaining from any prohibited substances, Christians in a few villages were out on the streets with litre-bottles of Arak, dancing and setting off firecrackers from 4pm until dawn the next day. The British delegation found the ‘liberal’ attitude to fireworks amusing for a while, but after a couple of hours of enormous Beirut-style explosions going off around them, they tired and decided to leave. They were then confronted by a fantastic example of Syrian policing, as a roadblock had been erected to stop cars getting in AND OUT of the village. Their protests that they didn’t want to stay for the next 12 hours and that there was a pregnant woman in the car, were, until a senior officer turned up, meeting deaf ears. They were not an exceptional case, apparently, as “everyone’s pregnant today”.
My uncle R was here for a week. He arrived tired and moaning of sitting next to some idiot that kept sticking his elbows into him while he was sleeping. That idiot turned out to be visiting our friend here and coming to supper at ours the next night. Cue some rather embarrassing conversations about how cramped plane seats are these days. His first night was also a bit of a disaster as he got here on the second day of Ramadan, which plays havoc with all opening and closing times, and means that some restaurants only serve food at certain times. But you would think when you book a table at a restaurant miles from anywhere else for 9.30pm that they might tell you that there is no food until Suhur at 12.30am. “But sir, there is no problem. We can serve you tea for 3 hours while you wait.”
It’s also been exam time - I went back to the UK for my viva and passed. Mr A has also taken his final exam. He is now ready to speak Arabic in a city where everyone speaks English fluently.
Finally, there is a happy ending for the tortoises, as they are being transferred to a garden where they will be looked after by professionals (i.e. the handyman). We thought we had lost the female one since we hadn’t seen her for a week. But happily we are writing this to the dulcet tones of tortoi rutting…
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