Amman to Damascus * Or, "How i learned to stop stressing and borrow available wings"

Like many a wayward Middle East backpacker before me, I came to Syria overland by way of Amman, Jordan. Unlike most other flip-flop-footed travelers in the region however, this journey was made at a rather precarious time, smack in the middle of the so-called “arab spring” this past June. Mere weeks after my own home nest of Canada issued a warning against all travel to the country, I decided to take the plunge and make good use of my $78 tourist visa obtained one snowy, spring morning months earlier via Canada post -after having mailed my passport all the way from Calgary to the Syrian embassy in Ottawa. It was a far cry from the hot morning months later, where I sat in the Abbasi Palace hotel in downtown Amman, a friendly budget establishment who -despite their protests that Syria was unsafe for me to visit at the time- had arranged for me a ride to Damascus in a shared taxi across the border.

Breakfast having just past, I paced about the common room, my backpack propped against the wall, shoes on and Lonely Planet in hand, having those ackward prolonged goodbyes with people whom you have spent only a few days with, but through the intense chaos of travel feel like you’ve somehow known your whole life. The phone rang at the front desk and I was told my taxi had just arrived downstairs. Maria, my Aussie friend and travel companion who had spent the last few weeks traipsing with me through the dust and sand and chaos of Jordan, helped to carry my clumsy bag into the little elevator and we made our farewells outside. She kissed me on both cheeks , said “stay in touch” and surely echoing my own appearance, looked somewhat like she was going to cry (or perhaps it was the unforgiving glare of the Jordanian sun).

In a sudden solar flash the scene changed quickly however, and there was little time for sentiment or sadness. My taxi driver beckoned; a large, loud, grumpy, chain-smoking man who spoke very little English and looked considerably stressed out about the drive (the Jabir-Nassib border crossing having been completely closed only days before, and the recent shelling of the nearby Syrian town of Daraa might have had something to do with this). None-the-less, I quickly piled in the backseat next to a rather miserable looking Jordanian man, until there was some intense shouting in Arabic amongst the parked car and I was shuffled into the front seat (as it is customary to not seat women next to men in most Mid-East countries). We drove a few blocks to a busy intersection where many other cabs were congregated, proceeded to continue the shouting with further confusion and drama and switching of passengers and seats -I got the impression that some other man had been promised my place in the taxi, but as I was certainly the only foreigner (not to mention the only female) around, somehow I thankfully took priority.

After all this kerfuffle and switching of places (and me silently repeating “oh GOD what am I getting myself into??”, in the back of my head), we were off, me riding shotgun with two very curious and perplexed looking Syrian men squished in the backseat behind me. One of them, a burly blue-eyed man with a kefiyyeh scarf on his head -who looked unlike any Arab man I had met thus far in the region (and admittedly got me rather excited about the attractive and exotic eye candy yet to come, lets be honest here), kept handing me cigarettes and drinks of his water and cookies and obscenely strong Arabic coffee. I was quite taken aback by this extreme hospitality, but then I remembered everything i'd read in my the guidebook about Syrians being some of the nicest friendliest people ever, and I smiled to myself at how this man was so perfectly living up to his reputation. I obliged him in all his offerings much to the chagrin of my bursting bladder. As well, the lack of available ashtray resulted in me hanging my arm out the window as we sped down the highway, to which the testy driver shrilly scolded me for in abrupt Arabic, forcing me to roll up the windows and creating a lovely hotbox of a ride- all smoke and coffee fumes and illegal speeds. I'll never forget that man in the backseat though, his genuine kindness and protectiveness; even though he spoke next to no English I could tell he was trying to ease my nerves- that I was a girl, alone, going into Syria in the middle of a revolution.

The Drive continued Northward and every time we passed a roadsign showing distances to the border (80 km…50 km…20km) I remember getting this huge shot of adrenaline, one that almost made me literally bounce with glee, spilling my little paper cup of coffee over my shaky mosquito-bitten knees. Here I was, going to a country that my own government had issued an “avoid all travel” warning to, that every other person I met in Egypt and Jordan who had planned to visit Syria had aborted their plans for. Me and me ALONE -a punky looking , rather scruffy, sunbaked and dirty Canadian female, in a worn out green hemp miniskirt, ripped t-shirt, black bandanna and maryjane ballet flats- going where I had been pleaded with by nearly an army of naysayers (God bless my friends and family) NOT to go to. I haven’t felt that sort of excitement and thrill, since.

When we came to the border, my excitement turned to actual nervousness as the guards searched the trunk of the taxi, gave me quizzical looks and all the while talked briskly in an Arabic that I couldn’t even pretend to understand. All three of us passengers handed our passports to the driver with him subtly placing mine on the bottom -as though he hoped he could somehow hide the glaringly obvious “CANADA” written in fancy gold-stamped text and just float on through. Ill never forget the way the guards looked at me through the dusty cab window, cocking their heads, with their crisp military gear and AK47’s casually dangling over their shoulders, as though I was some strange lost bird that had accidentally flown into an area outside its normal migratory route. I smiled demurely, a polite parrot if there ever was one, while the whole time the little invisible djinn of adventure travel on my shoulder giggled and shrieked and prodded me, “holy shit JULIA, YOU ARE IN SYRIA!”. We were waved through and then had to get out of the car to hand our customs forms to the officers and be officially let in the country. I don’t remember too much about this part, as I think the adrenaline rush had shattered the few cells in my brain responsible for memory retention. I do know that on the area of the form that asks “Occupation” I had written “Artist” forgetting that in Syria, “Artist” is a polite term for the desperate Russian girls who work as escorts throughout the region), to which the men at the booth had a good laugh at and winked and smiled. Welcome to Syria.

My taxi journey ended about an hour later, as abruptly as it had started, by being dumped on the side of the road in an outskirt of Damascus. A variety of motley looking local taxi drivers all squawked and cawed “Welcome, Welcome!” in varying degrees of English, and tried to throw my bags into their trunks as I stood somewhat shellshocked and confused. I eventually settled on one who seemed to rudimentarily understand my requests of “May I borrow your mobile phone”, and he drove me a few blocks to where my Syrian Couchsurfer friend was waiting.

It is at this point that my perilous journey into Syria ended, and my willing free-fall tumble down the rabbit hole of travel true love (infatuation? love?) began, with my 2 week stay. Love for a country unlike any other; a country with people so spirited and resilient that words cannot describe without resorting to tired cliches. A country that continues to both horrify me with its sickeningly brutal internal political policy, and astound me with its inherent natural and man-made beauty. A country of a thousand-and-one stories and myths, both good and bad, true and false. A country where even an exotic western bird such as myself can feel as at home and welcomed as though she were in her local habitat, an excitable red cardinal in a flock of nargileh-tobacco-scented carefree Syrian pigeons.

But that complicated love story, is another story for another time.

'Till next time.

(With feathers ruffled),

-Julia

The Breakfast Club

I am writing this while thousands of miles in the air, sitting on the rather worn out airbus jet operated by British Airways, enroute to London where insha allah I will catch my connecting flight to Calgary. There are no TV sets or anything on this rather barebones plane, so its giving me a good excuse to write.

I just finished eating my breakfast here, soggy toast and salty scrambled eggs served on a plastic tray, with packaged plastic cutlery, some decent yogurt with fresh orange segments, and a proper cuppa of English breakfast tea, with milk. This was the first cup of tea in over 3 months that I have had containing milk. How quickly things can change, just step on an airplane!!

It got me to thinking about these amazing last 107 days, and all the many breakfasts I consumed, and how I could honestly tell you the details about each one- I don’t know why but maybe because a weary backpacker often judges a hostel on its free breakfast, they stick out in my overloaded memory. Here then is a list of all the breakfast's I consumed on this 3-and-a-half month journey, staring in Cairo, where it all began:

Dinas Hostel , Cairo, Egypt – I remember most the chinzy foil wrapped triangles of processed cheese served with cucumbers and tomatoes that I was scared to consume (my sensitive Canadian stomach not yet being acclimatized to any minute amounts of bacteria on the vegetables), some dry french bread and packets of apricot jam. Me and the few other travelers to Egypt at that time would sit around in the common room and check out facebook and start the day, with instant coffees served by a charming Egyptian man named Ramadan, who spoke no English but had a twinkle in his eye that surpassed all language barriers.

Bob Marley house, Luxor , Egypt– For the 3 days that I stayed here my mornings started with a giant rooftop breakfast of fruit and yogurt and really bad tasting greasy eggs (butter is not always like normal butter in the middle east), maybe some toast, jam and various other things, while overlooking the Nile and the temples of Karnak proudly standing in the distance. the Man who ran this place was a cool (and also very attractive) Egyptian stoner dude who burned incense and had a giant tattoo of a scorpion on his arm. I also remember they served cereal here with that weird 3 month long shelflife, pasteurized-to-death milk that I refuse to drink. I haven’t had cereal in months because of it.

Penguin village, Dahab, Egypt – No free breakfast here that I recall. I know I ate a lot of delicious fuul and tahini and hummus with falafel patties (see the photo above) at a little café crawling with cats by the red sea one morning, and was so happy to be eating decent food in Egypt!

Wadi Rum Desert, Jordan – Staying with the Bedouin here, breakfast was varied. The first morning, upon hearing of our love of falafel, Tyseer made the drive into town before we awoke and presented me and my Aussie pal Maria, with some wonderful falafel wraps which we ate sitting in the sand. It was great. Other days we ate yogurt and dry pita bread out on a rock and it was pretty sparse. I remember eating dinner on the ground at the camp one night, sheep liver and something else that terrified me, with my bare hands that hadnt been washed in hours, just because I was so hungry and was worried if I didn’t eat then, I might be literally starving the next day.

Valentine inn, Wadi Musa, Jordan – Breakfast here was pretty standard and cost 3 dinar extra , so I think me and Maria ate cheap falafel down the street more than the offered bread and jam affair. I remember the amazing 20 item homemade vegetarian buffet dinners here most of all though, which at 4 dinar were great value and more than made up for the lacklustre breakfast.

Abbasi Palace hotel, Amman, Jordan – I remember the punchy and hilarious divorced female owner (not so many independant divorced punchy women in Jordan, let me tell you) smiling and getting her Indonesian workers to bring us coffee and toast and those little ubiquitous cheese triangles on trays divided with partitions. Hardboiled eggs. Jordanian fatayer pastries with spinach inside, mmm...while we watched BBC news (mostly of the carnage in Syria, where I was headed next) and me and Maria planned our mall days.

Damascus, Syria – Couchsurfing here with my friend Shadi meant the breakfast usually consisted of strong Arabic coffee (nothing like Turkish coffee, no murky grounds to thicken it, just distilled caffeine in a bottle spiced with cardamom and strong as HELL), numerous cigarettes and hunks of pita bread dipped in sticky date treacle syrup or hummus. One time we had boiled potatoes and eggs with salt and pepper, eaten silently with his very hungover friend Hashem who looked very unimpressed with Shadis cooking -but it tasted great to me.

Gawalhaer hotel , Aleppo, Syria – No free breakfast here, but I know I ate a mighty good schawarma after wandering around the souk one time , and also had some really good juice/smoothie thing made fresh down the street, that the hotel owner brought to me after a night of drinking Gin together on the roof.

Antakya, Turkey – Couchsurfed for a night here with my pal Celil and his friend, and was treated to a lovely homemade Kurdish breakfast of fresh pide bread, scrambled eggs, cherry syrup jam (very common in turkey), and the classic feta-like peyniri cheese. We ate on the floor of the kitchen with our hands. I loved it so much.

Urfa, Turkey – I stayed a few nights at some weird little hotel here where no one spoke any English and there was certainly no breakfast, maybe a cup of tea offered, but I ate some apricots off the street and a giant doner sandwich that was actually decent for once, so it was okay I guess.

Dohuk, Iraq - Spent one night here at the only hotel recommended in the lonely planet guide, no other guests except the Iraqi man, Hassam, who picked me up (in a platonic way of course) and took care of me at the border. No complimentary breakfast here, but Hassam treated me to fresh fruit smoothies and tiramisu-like cake the next morning at a little sunny yellow cafe down the street, before we headed off in the shared taxi bound for Erbil.

Erbil. Iraq – Staying with my friend Emily here was great. Breakfast was shared downstairs in the company of her roomates in the kitchen of their giant metal-doored and concrete floored apartment (typical middle-east housing) – surly Joe from B.C and another chatty American from San Francisco, Carter. I remember we ate a delicious pepper spiced Kurdish cheese that I haven’t found since, bread, eggs, jam, olives, Halva and plenty of instant coffee

One miscellaneous morning at a bus station in Diyarbakir on the way back to Turkey I found myself, (after 20 hours on a bus coming from Iraq), eating French fries with a lot of ketchup at 8 am. That was a long 30 hour journey to make it to Mersin and I was hungry! I also ate a lot of Turkish prepackacged roadside cakes.

Mersin, Turkey – For 6 weeks here, (mon – fri) I was treated to complimentary breakfast at the summer camp I was teaching at. It made the getting up and stumbling downstairs to the service bus at 730 am a bit easier knowing that food was waiting for me there. It varied a bit day to day, but always consisted of giant platters of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, fresh white cheese, French bread, eggs of various kinds (mushroom omelettes or sometimes this tomatoes and onion based stewed eggs that I loved), sometimes fried cheese rolls or borek, olives, and plenty of little tulip shaped cups of tea

Konya, Turkey – when I couchsurfed here with my Sufi friend Huseyin, his father made the most wonderful Turkish breakfast for me and the 3 other French girls staying with them. Hardboiled eggs, bread, tomatoes, cukes, lettuce and mint, olives,cheese, treacle syrup, pomegrante syrup and endless cups of tea and Turkish coffee. I helped slice the cheese into cubes and wash the lettuce and made his dad laugh very hard with my rudimentary Turkish (“gunaydin, nasil siniz?” = good morning! How are you”). It was one of the nicest mornings of my life.

Stray Cat hostel, Istanbul, Turkey – Upon my first arrival here, breakfast had just passed and I accidentally knocked the still-half-full bowl of scrambled eggs all over the floor with my clumsy giant backpack. Chris just laughed and told me to go put my things away…setting the easy going mood I had the pleasure of enduring for the entire 11 days I worked here. Breakfast here was lazy and simple, --french bread, sometimes eggs, nutella, yogurt and tomatoes. However there were 2 days where in a hungover unshowered haze , after arriving back in Taksim having spent the night at my friends house on the Asian side, I ate junior whoppers and orange juice from Burger King  instead. Ughhh

And now….I head back to Canada. My last free breakfast courtesy of British airways. My head is so full of so many memories, its like a swimming pool full to the brim whose excess water flows into the edge when someone enters the pool. and gets sucked down and recycled back into the system. I can visualize all these breakfasts and where I was when I ate them…and now I have to come back to the familiar, the mundane, the same. The hurried Calgary breakfast of Starbucks lattes and bagels. I'm so nervous.

I am going to vow to eat more interesting foods in the mornings.

Goodbye Syria

Now that I am out of Syria I feel I should post another entry about my 10 days spent there.

Something about seeing Assad’s smug photo every 10 minutes, watching you from various vantage points like a hawk, makes a person (perhaps justly) paranoid, about writing anything less than 'complimentary' on an online travel blog. Don’t get me wrong, as a (female) tourist, I couldn’t have been safer, and i had an absolutely amazing time, Syrian people really are the kindest people i have ever met and I can't tell you how easy the borders and any situation involving the “authorities” were (the various policemen who sent me “I love yous” and photos of hearts on my recently temporarily activated Bluetooth device, or the officer in full camoflage army gear at the Turkish/Syria border who responded to my answers of his “where have you been/where are you headed next?” questions with, “ahh yes…well regardless, come back here and live with me in Syria, ok? *wink-smile-wink*) but there was a lot more to my visit than just fun, a lot more to talk about than just souks and falafels and sheeshas and arabic coffees with pretty (very pretty), Syrian men.

Now is the time to write a bit more in depth about Syria, and how it was for me to see a country in the middle of revolt, from the inside...writing from the safe distance of Turkey where i now am.

I wrote in my first entry from Damascus about how “surreal” it was to be somewhere that had a “do not travel warning” against it, and how positive my experiences at the border and whatnot were, and I feel like I really need to expand on this. It occurs to me that maybe using the word “surreal” was a bit trite and…ignorant. As in, the "spoiled rich tourist" who exists in a bubble of surrealism and fun and doesn’t quite acknowledge the reality of whats going on. Except sitting that Friday afternoon, in the Damascus suburb of Sehnaya, while there was no internet in the country at all that day, Shadi and i curled up on the couch...I WAS in that reality, however briefly and i saw exactly the brutality if it. That reality was a lot more sickening than surreal, and using the word "surreal", well, i feel like somehow i almost diminished the actuality of things and I don't want to do that.

It was painful to be watching Al-Jezeera news about the protests, shootings and so on, that occurred in Hama (25 at least killed that day), as well as the peaceful (from what I gathered) marches that occurred only 10 minutes from where I was, but resulted in the road being blocked (half the reason we stayed in the house all day)...and to see in contrast the amazing hospitality and kindness of the same Syrian people who's families had been effected by the shootings.

What I am trying to say here, with some difficulty (i'm still suffering the after effects of Syrian-induced sleep deprivation,i i think, bear with me here), is that it was more than a "surreal" experience to visit Syria at this time in history; it was heartbreaking. To be in such a beautiful city as Damascus, with its cobblestone alleys full of people (men and men, women and women, men and women), walking arm in arm... such genuinely kind and friendly people, still living life with more joie de vivre than the average Calgarian and knowing the bloodshed that was going on at that very moment throughout the country...it was really devastating. To walk the mysterious tangled streets and see Assad's smiling face peering down at you, from shop windows, cafes, bustop signs….virtually everywhere, and know that the general consensus on the street at this time was that he is responsible for these deaths, he is to blame...but yet people still have to stare at these photos or risk death if they rise up against him...I cant really put into words how that felt to watch.

I am so incredibly grateful that i made the choice to go to Syria, and the time i spent there was unforgettable. I met the most amazing people and i had the unique chance to see a country technically in turmoil, that still welcomed me and showed, an outsider, more joy and friendliness than most fortunate, stable, western, "free"countries.

InSha Allah, i will get to return one day to Syria, and see the towns and cities that i was forced to miss due to the regimes brutal crackdown on dissent, but more importantly i hope for a swift end to the suffering of the people, and a quick fall from whatever grace Assad has left (there ain't much), and that the people of Syria... get their beautiful country back, full, complete and free.

xoxo

love, from Turkey

a mysterious old lady here at the hotel in Aleppo (i didnt think there were any other guests?), just said a whole bunch of things to me, in what i think was Armenian, and i thought at first she was scolding me or something, for wearing a revealing shirt (because she was so loud and staring at me intensely)...but then she proceeded to come over to where i was sitting, crouch down, hug me and give me 2 very big wet kisses on the cheek.

i love Syria.

good omen

Today a syrian pigeon shat on my arm, whilst I sat near the Umayyad Mosque in the old city.

For real, a nice big glob of birdshit on my arm, as i sat surrounded by Iranian women in black sheets and old men drinking coffee and little kids eating ice cream and tea sellers in their fancy costumes.

Only in Damascus would this not bother me.

In fact...its good luck to be shit on by a bird. right?

woo!

June 2 2011. Damascus, Syria.

I have been in Damascus now for 2 nights, staying in a suburb called “Sehnaya”, with my friend Shadi and his other friend, Hashem. Every once and awhile, (well more than once in awhile really), I almost have to pinch myself, that here I am, sitting around and drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and drinking Syrian beer, with 2 Syrian guys, in a country that has an “avoid all travel” warning to it, and that every single person back in Canada warned me, pleaded with me, not to visit. It’s a touch surreal, but only adds to my enjoyment of it really.

The shared Taxi trip to the border, from Amman, is where the surrealism all started. Every single sign post on the highway, as I got closer and closer to the border crossing gave me this ridiculous shot of adrenaline. “Jabir 50 km", "Jabir, 30 km" etc etc”, until finally I found myself, along with the 2 Syrian men in the backseat and my loud and impatient Jordanian driver, at the Syria/Jorder crossing of Jabir-Nassib. And suddenly, in the most surreal moment of all, there I was, laughing with the border patrol guards over my writing “artist” as profession on my entry card. (I learned later that “artist”, when written in English, means something very different and more along the lines on “escort”, in Syria, so perhaps that was why they were so friendly. Haha. ), and being smiled at and looked at with some mixture of curiosity and fascination. They scanned my passport over several times, for what I assume was an evidence of entry to Israel (my Egypt/Jordan stamps etc etc), and then smiled and said “Welcome to Syria”. I have had more hassle trying to simply fly from Calgary to Vancouver, I swear to God. After several other checkpoints, all ending with a smile from the man with the machine gun and a “you are welcome in Syria”, we were on our way to Damascus, passing near Daraa (which made me feel nauseuous but was otherwise uneventful.), headphones on and cigarette smoke pluming out the windows of the taxi.

And now I am here, on a couch, sitting with my friends, in Damascus. One of very very few foriengers (I met another Canadian who spent last night with us, smoking nargileh and drinking tea, the only person in his whole hostel), and that’s it. It’s a completely strange feeling, and as I have said now several times, the only word that seems appropriate to describe it is “surreal”. But have obviously had no troubles thus far, and people have been nothing but friendly and helpful (the man in the taxi who forcefed me water, cookies, and countless cigarettes which of course I had to partake in, my couchsurfing friend Shadi, etc), and its amazing. The old city, its narrow streets and spicey smells and crowded cafes and pigeons fluttering overhead feel a million miles away from the Syria that you see on the news.

“You are alive when you live by the skin of your teeth”, and this is true.

I have never felt quite so alive.