Emails from the Edge (21 page)
Read Emails from the Edge Online
Authors: Ken Haley
SYRIA: 18 FEBRUARYâ1 MARCH
In the days when Bill Clinton ruled the roost, Syria was branded a ârogue state'. For all I know, it still is. Certainly, at the time of writing it remained a state that supported terrorism (according to the US Congress). But there are good reasons to go there, quite apart from the hospitality of the ordinary peopleâwhich comes as less and less of a surprise the further this journey takes me.
Assyria was one of the earliest powerful nations, and Damascus lays claim to being the world's oldest city. Here, history breathes.
DAY 282 (18 FEBRUARY): THE BORDER, OR THEREABOUTS
They manhandled me, were on the point of roughing me up, and nearly ruined my nice continuous line on the map. I was shaking with anger and powerless to stop them.
Backtracking, the first blow to my keen anticipation was struck at Amman railway station. At 7 am, in the process of buying a ticket to Damascus, I couldn't get over the fact that today I would be travelling on the Hejaz Railway that al-Aurans (Lawrence) and his merry band blew up when the Ottomans were the nominal ruling power round these parts.
The ticket vendor, to give him his due, tried to let me down gently. âThey will not let you into Syria,' he cooed. But the Syrian consul in Oman had promised there would be no problem, I replied, and showed him the relevant passage in my guidebook: âAustralians and the Irish are [two] of the few nationalities that can cross into Syria from Jordan without a visa [in advance]âit is issued at the border â¦'
Not only would it be issued, it would be free of charge: I had the diplomat's word for that, too. Knowing better than to argue, the vendor sold me the ticket. As porters lifted me aboard I was happy to see that the carriages were âopen-plan' so I didn't have to spend the journey crammed into the vestibule. I settled down for a leisurely journey north.
My luck held out even beyond the country's last railway station, where Jordanian immigration control argued earnestly over whether I should be allowed to continue. My what-the-ambassador-told-me-and-the-book-says routine prevailed despite much shaking of official heads. There was a brief attempt to levy a departure tax. âA departure tax by train?' I protested. âYou must be joking.' They did not insist: sweet reason had prevailed again.
But then along came Syria. Our old rust bucket rattled to a stop at De'ra railway station, a couple of kilometres over the border. Here, I had been told by helpful passengers with little English but a gleam of compassion in their eyes, everyone must change for the train to Damascus.
This I hadn't reckoned on. After a five-minute wait, the surliest-looking young soldiers I had clapped eyes on in a long time bustled aboard and indicated I must disembark. I pointed to the wheelchair, made it obvious despite any language gap between us that I couldn't get myself onto the platform, let alone into the Customs building, and handed them my passport.
âAustralian passport,' I thought, a trace smugly. âThey will see I'm not a rogue American, but one of the good guysâperhaps they'll think I'm Irish?âand, their China-wall faces will crease into grins normally reserved for reunions with long-lost relatives.'
Ten minutes passed, fifteen. Alongside us, not a leg's breadth from our train, another had shunted down the track and everyone else in our compartment was swapping carriages. So I lowered myself to the floor and crawled and shuffled onto the Damascus train.
Five minutes later I was poised for the onward journey, along with my luggage, which had been brought over by the other passengers, when a frowning military officer with a moustache that would have done the Führer proud towered over me and spoke briskly to a young woman translator. âHe says you must leave the train, and you must leave the country,' she told me.
âPlease inform him that I was told by the Syrian ambassador to Oman,'âI fumbled for his cardââMuhammad Ibrahim, that I would be issued a visa on arrival.' The officer dismissed his translator: this was an ominous sign.
A minute later, the same four strapping young soldiers stepped aboard and, following their superior's command, took hold of my limbs and lifted. Anyone in a wheelchair will tell you that the rest of the population is often awkward when it comes to relating physically to you. A hug is difficult, even if one feels the urge; a pat on the shoulder is all most people can manage. But violent or forcible entry into one's personal comfort zone is so unexpected that this bodily removal came as a shock. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind not to go stiff or resist. I let them lift me, shouting, âI'm in a wheelchair, you can do medical damage!' but, of course, they couldn't understand a word and wouldn't have altered their conduct if they did.
Looking back, I concede that they did not use undue force, and carefully deposited me on the seat of the train I'd arrived onâthe one that was shortly to head back to Ammanâfollowed by my luggage, piece by piece. But at the time I was embarrassed and, as soon as I was free to do so without provoking them to drop me, gave vent to my fury, shouting in their wake as they retreated to the Customs house.
The consul's assurance was an empty promise. I slumped in the corner of the carriage, a spectacle of distress that other passengers tried to sympathise with, but, for all they knew, the authorities were well rid of a dangerous individual.
The same train that brought me to Syria bore me away again, back to Jordan. I don't know the Arabic for âI told you so' but it was written all over the Jordanian immigration authorities' faces. I turned to an English-speaking passenger to ask why the Syrians wouldn't let me in.
âIt is because they have no computers at the railway station,' he explained, âso they cannot check you. They think you may be an Israeli agent, or a terrorist.'
Being deported from Syria as a terrorist is one of my few claims to fame. The irony didn't dawn on me at the time, though, I have to say.
Sometime after 4 pm I arrived back at the Syrian borderâthis time by road. A taxi dropped me there, and my plan was to get that elusive visa before hitchhiking, if need be, to Damascus. It took me a full hour among the Jordanian paper-shufflers to explain my cancelled exit stamp and get a new one. With no one to transport my luggage those few hundred metres to the Syrian border post, I was contemplating the risks of mounting some kind of bag relay when I saw a passenger coach boarding. It was certainly pointed in the right direction so worth a try.
Did the driver have room for a traveller going to Damascus? He nodded. I clambered aboard, another passenger moved up, and suddenly my fortunes had changed.
Just one obstacle remained: when we came to the Syrian post, the authorities demanded US$30 for the visa. At this point, it was obvious, no one was going to be ringing Muscat to give me the benefit of the doubt so discretion was called for. Politely, I told them this visa should really be complimentary but I would pay the US$30 if he issued a receipt. He obliged. I held my peace. No one is ever going to be able to say I was deported from a country twice on the same day.
DAY 284 (20 FEBRUARY): DAMASCUS
This city harks back to the dawn of civilisation but, for the most part, it features abominable architecture from the early 20th century, tending to Stalinist monumentalism. As is possible anywhere the French colonised, you can get a decent baguette here, but the overriding impression these days is of a police state. I soon locate the capital's only Internet caféâsituated opposite the security police headquartersâand its young manager confides that all messages are monitored by the police, and there's nothing he can do about it.
Everywhere, in posters of varying size, one sees the stern visage of Bashar al-Assad, the thirty-something dictator who took over when his father, Hafez, died, and who runs an equally tight ship. There is no point in pretending that Syria is a Western democracy, or even that it aspires to be. It takes only a few heart-to-heart conversations with the young and the intellectualâcurious about the West, sceptical, not in the market for any cut-and-dried belief systemsâto know that the Syrian military and police rule through fear.
Nothing has essentially changed since Lawrence said of the Syrians at the end of World War I, âThey were discontented always with what government they had; such being their intellectual pride; but few of them honestly thought out a working alternative, and fewer still agreed upon one.'
Down to the Immigration Office: they shouldn't have charged me for that visa and I am out for administrative revenge.
Here, in this three-storey building that looks as though it hasn't been cleaned since the 1940s, hundreds of people crowd into the downstairs hall, clamouring for the right to speak to someone in authority. But those in authority are on floor threeâup three flights of stairs. After an hour or so, a man in a buttoned-up white shirt descends the stairs and asks what I'm here for. When I explain, and hand him my passport, he asks me to wait downstairs. What choice have I? Another half hour passes, and he returns. âThe high general handles these matters, and he would like you to come upstairs.'
âPlease tell the high general,' I say, barely containing my frustration, âthat he must come down low because I cannot go up high.'
âBut,' he counters, âyou are wasting your time. The visa is paid for.'
âDid the Syrian consul in Muscat lie to me when he told me the visa was free?' I challenge him.
âNo,' he replies with studied equanimity, âhe was right. For Australians, the visa is freeâbut you must pay.'
This apparent contradiction throws me for a moment, but then I see Syrian-style reason. âDo you really mean that the visa is free but, because I have paid at the border, you're not going to give me my money back?'
âYes, that's right,' he beams, clearly impressed by my quick grasp of Syrian crisis management.
âOh well, that's all I wanted to know,' I say. Business is completed: it's time to see the city.
DAY 285 (21 FEBRUARY): DAMASCUS
Much of Damascus may be architecturally undistinguished but, boy, does the Old City live up to its name. On the edge of the CBD, it sprawls over little more than a square kilometre but inside it are bazaars, ancient Roman ruins,
hammam
baths and mosques.
Opposite the great covered bazaar, Souq al-Hamidiyya, is the Umayyad Mosque, which suggests most powerfully that if I didn't know better this could be the third century before or after Christ. Accompanied by Bachar, a Syrian museum attendant steeped in his country's history, I wait calmly outside while the Umayyad's senior mullah is humbly asked whether I may intrude with silent reverence into the courtyard of Damascus's holy of holies. (My wheels enable me to do silence better than pedestrians.)
Despite Islam's forbidding image in the West, I know from experience (most recently in Kuwait and Bahrain) that Muslims welcome respectful visitors, believing that we are all creatures of Allah. But error creeps into all human organisations, and hierarchies are like bread, growing crusty at the top. So, already branded a terrorist in a land to which so few Westerners come, I feel only a dull disappointment on being told, âThe mullah says you cannot enter the mosque because it is forbidden in Scripture to enter the House of God on wheels.'
I hand the camera to my learned go-between and ask him to be my eyes in the House of God.
Sensing my disappointment at being excluded from the inner sanctum, Bachar points to one of the pencil-thin spires that grace the mosque's south wall. âThat is the white minaret of Damascus, which we also call the Jesus Minaret,' he urges my gaze skyward. Instantly I recall that the Christian Lord is also revered in Islam as a prophet.
âIt is believed by Muslims that Jesus will appear there on Judgment Dayâto make all people Muslims. We don't believe that Jesus is dead, but we believe Judas was crucified in his place.'
Damascus, as St Paul was the first to admit, is a place where all previous beliefs are seen in a new light.
George W(armonger) Bush can talk about Crusades all he likes: it was Saladin who sent the Crusaders packing, defeated Richard the Lionheart and captured Jerusalem (in 1187)âand here the all-conquering Arab hero was buried.
In the shadow of the Umayyad Mosque stands his marble mausoleum, draped in a green Islamic banner, much too new to have occupied its place of honour since 1193. I ask Bachar about this, and it turns out that even here one cannot quite escape Lawrence of Arabia: on conquering Damascus in 1918, his forces are believed to have stolen the coverlet from Saladin's sarcophagus.
Next comes an even bigger shock: the mausoleum itself is barely a century old, a gift to mark Kaiser Wilhelm's visit here in 1898. Saladin represents the pinnacle of Muslim conquest, so it is a tribute that eight centuries after his death would-be mighty men jostle to claim his mantle.
Oh, and here's a quick way to win money. Ask someone, âWho was the most powerful person ever to hail from Tikrit?'
Odds are they'll answer âSaddam Hussein'. But it's no contest, really; even Arabs will give the prize to Saladin. After all, Saddam (who sometimes compared himself to the great man) never captured Jerusalem.
DAY 287 (23 FEBRUARY): PALMYRA
Another day, another empire. To the central Syrian desert, hundreds of kilometres north-east of the capital, I have come on a public bus occupied mostly by bored soldiers. Here amid a copybook oasis lies Palmyra, alias Tadmor. A smallish town now, it was a rich and flourishing centre for the first two centuries of the Christian era. Its world-acclaimed historic site lies a good quarter hour's push (by chair) from the modern settlement. Rebuffing the offer of a camel rideâdo these tourist touts lack imagination or eyesight, I wonderâI pass the hours rolling up to the
agora
, then down to the ancient city theatre, and explore as much of the breathtaking Temple of Bel (AD 31) as I can.
In the days when Bill Clinton ruled the roost, Syria was branded a ârogue state'. For all I know, it still is. Certainly, at the time of writing it remained a state that supported terrorism (according to the US Congress). But there are good reasons to go there, quite apart from the hospitality of the ordinary peopleâwhich comes as less and less of a surprise the further this journey takes me.
Assyria was one of the earliest powerful nations, and Damascus lays claim to being the world's oldest city. Here, history breathes.
DAY 282 (18 FEBRUARY): THE BORDER, OR THEREABOUTS
They manhandled me, were on the point of roughing me up, and nearly ruined my nice continuous line on the map. I was shaking with anger and powerless to stop them.
Backtracking, the first blow to my keen anticipation was struck at Amman railway station. At 7 am, in the process of buying a ticket to Damascus, I couldn't get over the fact that today I would be travelling on the Hejaz Railway that al-Aurans (Lawrence) and his merry band blew up when the Ottomans were the nominal ruling power round these parts.
The ticket vendor, to give him his due, tried to let me down gently. âThey will not let you into Syria,' he cooed. But the Syrian consul in Oman had promised there would be no problem, I replied, and showed him the relevant passage in my guidebook: âAustralians and the Irish are [two] of the few nationalities that can cross into Syria from Jordan without a visa [in advance]âit is issued at the border â¦'
Not only would it be issued, it would be free of charge: I had the diplomat's word for that, too. Knowing better than to argue, the vendor sold me the ticket. As porters lifted me aboard I was happy to see that the carriages were âopen-plan' so I didn't have to spend the journey crammed into the vestibule. I settled down for a leisurely journey north.
My luck held out even beyond the country's last railway station, where Jordanian immigration control argued earnestly over whether I should be allowed to continue. My what-the-ambassador-told-me-and-the-book-says routine prevailed despite much shaking of official heads. There was a brief attempt to levy a departure tax. âA departure tax by train?' I protested. âYou must be joking.' They did not insist: sweet reason had prevailed again.
But then along came Syria. Our old rust bucket rattled to a stop at De'ra railway station, a couple of kilometres over the border. Here, I had been told by helpful passengers with little English but a gleam of compassion in their eyes, everyone must change for the train to Damascus.
This I hadn't reckoned on. After a five-minute wait, the surliest-looking young soldiers I had clapped eyes on in a long time bustled aboard and indicated I must disembark. I pointed to the wheelchair, made it obvious despite any language gap between us that I couldn't get myself onto the platform, let alone into the Customs building, and handed them my passport.
âAustralian passport,' I thought, a trace smugly. âThey will see I'm not a rogue American, but one of the good guysâperhaps they'll think I'm Irish?âand, their China-wall faces will crease into grins normally reserved for reunions with long-lost relatives.'
Ten minutes passed, fifteen. Alongside us, not a leg's breadth from our train, another had shunted down the track and everyone else in our compartment was swapping carriages. So I lowered myself to the floor and crawled and shuffled onto the Damascus train.
Five minutes later I was poised for the onward journey, along with my luggage, which had been brought over by the other passengers, when a frowning military officer with a moustache that would have done the Führer proud towered over me and spoke briskly to a young woman translator. âHe says you must leave the train, and you must leave the country,' she told me.
âPlease inform him that I was told by the Syrian ambassador to Oman,'âI fumbled for his cardââMuhammad Ibrahim, that I would be issued a visa on arrival.' The officer dismissed his translator: this was an ominous sign.
A minute later, the same four strapping young soldiers stepped aboard and, following their superior's command, took hold of my limbs and lifted. Anyone in a wheelchair will tell you that the rest of the population is often awkward when it comes to relating physically to you. A hug is difficult, even if one feels the urge; a pat on the shoulder is all most people can manage. But violent or forcible entry into one's personal comfort zone is so unexpected that this bodily removal came as a shock. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind not to go stiff or resist. I let them lift me, shouting, âI'm in a wheelchair, you can do medical damage!' but, of course, they couldn't understand a word and wouldn't have altered their conduct if they did.
Looking back, I concede that they did not use undue force, and carefully deposited me on the seat of the train I'd arrived onâthe one that was shortly to head back to Ammanâfollowed by my luggage, piece by piece. But at the time I was embarrassed and, as soon as I was free to do so without provoking them to drop me, gave vent to my fury, shouting in their wake as they retreated to the Customs house.
The consul's assurance was an empty promise. I slumped in the corner of the carriage, a spectacle of distress that other passengers tried to sympathise with, but, for all they knew, the authorities were well rid of a dangerous individual.
The same train that brought me to Syria bore me away again, back to Jordan. I don't know the Arabic for âI told you so' but it was written all over the Jordanian immigration authorities' faces. I turned to an English-speaking passenger to ask why the Syrians wouldn't let me in.
âIt is because they have no computers at the railway station,' he explained, âso they cannot check you. They think you may be an Israeli agent, or a terrorist.'
Being deported from Syria as a terrorist is one of my few claims to fame. The irony didn't dawn on me at the time, though, I have to say.
Sometime after 4 pm I arrived back at the Syrian borderâthis time by road. A taxi dropped me there, and my plan was to get that elusive visa before hitchhiking, if need be, to Damascus. It took me a full hour among the Jordanian paper-shufflers to explain my cancelled exit stamp and get a new one. With no one to transport my luggage those few hundred metres to the Syrian border post, I was contemplating the risks of mounting some kind of bag relay when I saw a passenger coach boarding. It was certainly pointed in the right direction so worth a try.
Did the driver have room for a traveller going to Damascus? He nodded. I clambered aboard, another passenger moved up, and suddenly my fortunes had changed.
Just one obstacle remained: when we came to the Syrian post, the authorities demanded US$30 for the visa. At this point, it was obvious, no one was going to be ringing Muscat to give me the benefit of the doubt so discretion was called for. Politely, I told them this visa should really be complimentary but I would pay the US$30 if he issued a receipt. He obliged. I held my peace. No one is ever going to be able to say I was deported from a country twice on the same day.
DAY 284 (20 FEBRUARY): DAMASCUS
This city harks back to the dawn of civilisation but, for the most part, it features abominable architecture from the early 20th century, tending to Stalinist monumentalism. As is possible anywhere the French colonised, you can get a decent baguette here, but the overriding impression these days is of a police state. I soon locate the capital's only Internet caféâsituated opposite the security police headquartersâand its young manager confides that all messages are monitored by the police, and there's nothing he can do about it.
Everywhere, in posters of varying size, one sees the stern visage of Bashar al-Assad, the thirty-something dictator who took over when his father, Hafez, died, and who runs an equally tight ship. There is no point in pretending that Syria is a Western democracy, or even that it aspires to be. It takes only a few heart-to-heart conversations with the young and the intellectualâcurious about the West, sceptical, not in the market for any cut-and-dried belief systemsâto know that the Syrian military and police rule through fear.
Nothing has essentially changed since Lawrence said of the Syrians at the end of World War I, âThey were discontented always with what government they had; such being their intellectual pride; but few of them honestly thought out a working alternative, and fewer still agreed upon one.'
Down to the Immigration Office: they shouldn't have charged me for that visa and I am out for administrative revenge.
Here, in this three-storey building that looks as though it hasn't been cleaned since the 1940s, hundreds of people crowd into the downstairs hall, clamouring for the right to speak to someone in authority. But those in authority are on floor threeâup three flights of stairs. After an hour or so, a man in a buttoned-up white shirt descends the stairs and asks what I'm here for. When I explain, and hand him my passport, he asks me to wait downstairs. What choice have I? Another half hour passes, and he returns. âThe high general handles these matters, and he would like you to come upstairs.'
âPlease tell the high general,' I say, barely containing my frustration, âthat he must come down low because I cannot go up high.'
âBut,' he counters, âyou are wasting your time. The visa is paid for.'
âDid the Syrian consul in Muscat lie to me when he told me the visa was free?' I challenge him.
âNo,' he replies with studied equanimity, âhe was right. For Australians, the visa is freeâbut you must pay.'
This apparent contradiction throws me for a moment, but then I see Syrian-style reason. âDo you really mean that the visa is free but, because I have paid at the border, you're not going to give me my money back?'
âYes, that's right,' he beams, clearly impressed by my quick grasp of Syrian crisis management.
âOh well, that's all I wanted to know,' I say. Business is completed: it's time to see the city.
DAY 285 (21 FEBRUARY): DAMASCUS
Much of Damascus may be architecturally undistinguished but, boy, does the Old City live up to its name. On the edge of the CBD, it sprawls over little more than a square kilometre but inside it are bazaars, ancient Roman ruins,
hammam
baths and mosques.
Opposite the great covered bazaar, Souq al-Hamidiyya, is the Umayyad Mosque, which suggests most powerfully that if I didn't know better this could be the third century before or after Christ. Accompanied by Bachar, a Syrian museum attendant steeped in his country's history, I wait calmly outside while the Umayyad's senior mullah is humbly asked whether I may intrude with silent reverence into the courtyard of Damascus's holy of holies. (My wheels enable me to do silence better than pedestrians.)
Despite Islam's forbidding image in the West, I know from experience (most recently in Kuwait and Bahrain) that Muslims welcome respectful visitors, believing that we are all creatures of Allah. But error creeps into all human organisations, and hierarchies are like bread, growing crusty at the top. So, already branded a terrorist in a land to which so few Westerners come, I feel only a dull disappointment on being told, âThe mullah says you cannot enter the mosque because it is forbidden in Scripture to enter the House of God on wheels.'
I hand the camera to my learned go-between and ask him to be my eyes in the House of God.
Sensing my disappointment at being excluded from the inner sanctum, Bachar points to one of the pencil-thin spires that grace the mosque's south wall. âThat is the white minaret of Damascus, which we also call the Jesus Minaret,' he urges my gaze skyward. Instantly I recall that the Christian Lord is also revered in Islam as a prophet.
âIt is believed by Muslims that Jesus will appear there on Judgment Dayâto make all people Muslims. We don't believe that Jesus is dead, but we believe Judas was crucified in his place.'
Damascus, as St Paul was the first to admit, is a place where all previous beliefs are seen in a new light.
George W(armonger) Bush can talk about Crusades all he likes: it was Saladin who sent the Crusaders packing, defeated Richard the Lionheart and captured Jerusalem (in 1187)âand here the all-conquering Arab hero was buried.
In the shadow of the Umayyad Mosque stands his marble mausoleum, draped in a green Islamic banner, much too new to have occupied its place of honour since 1193. I ask Bachar about this, and it turns out that even here one cannot quite escape Lawrence of Arabia: on conquering Damascus in 1918, his forces are believed to have stolen the coverlet from Saladin's sarcophagus.
Next comes an even bigger shock: the mausoleum itself is barely a century old, a gift to mark Kaiser Wilhelm's visit here in 1898. Saladin represents the pinnacle of Muslim conquest, so it is a tribute that eight centuries after his death would-be mighty men jostle to claim his mantle.
Oh, and here's a quick way to win money. Ask someone, âWho was the most powerful person ever to hail from Tikrit?'
Odds are they'll answer âSaddam Hussein'. But it's no contest, really; even Arabs will give the prize to Saladin. After all, Saddam (who sometimes compared himself to the great man) never captured Jerusalem.
DAY 287 (23 FEBRUARY): PALMYRA
Another day, another empire. To the central Syrian desert, hundreds of kilometres north-east of the capital, I have come on a public bus occupied mostly by bored soldiers. Here amid a copybook oasis lies Palmyra, alias Tadmor. A smallish town now, it was a rich and flourishing centre for the first two centuries of the Christian era. Its world-acclaimed historic site lies a good quarter hour's push (by chair) from the modern settlement. Rebuffing the offer of a camel rideâdo these tourist touts lack imagination or eyesight, I wonderâI pass the hours rolling up to the
agora
, then down to the ancient city theatre, and explore as much of the breathtaking Temple of Bel (AD 31) as I can.
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