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Visiting Syria
news.google.com
The kindness of Syrians August 4, 2007 By Phyllis Meras - DAMASCUS, Syria -- Friends said I must not visit Syria. What was I thinking? It was much too dangerous. The government was too totalitarian. Wasn't Syria suspected of playing a major role in the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri? It bordered on Iraq and was filled with refugees who preyed upon the unsuspecting. The U.S. State Department was against all but essential travel. Why did I want to go there anyway? I replied that I had always wanted to see the walled Old City of Damascus, renowned throughout the Middle East. I wanted to see the "street which is called Straight," where the Bible says St. Paul stayed in the first century. I wanted to see the winding souks of old Aleppo, the Greco-Roman ruins at Palmyra and the Krak des Chevaliers, the largest and best-preserved crusader castle in the world. I didn't know it then, but I would find out that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had decided to go to Syria at the same time I chose. Because I speak no Arabic and had just five days to spend in the country, I made hotel arrangements and some travel plans in advance. For hard-to-reach destinations, I would have a car and a driver; for intercity travel, I would go by public bus. My first overnight lodging was old, slightly fusty and on a busy street. It was, however, within walking distance of the Old City and the National and Army museums. Friends who had visited Syria had told me that these, along with the Old City, were worth seeing. So, the first morning, I set off. What I wanted to see, it turned out, was all within walking distance but situated on a multilane thoroughfare along which traffic roared without stopping. There were no street lights and no policemen, only a pedestrian bridge here or there over the highway. However, before I found a bridge, as I stood, immobilized, on a traffic island, a woman took me by the arm and helped me dodge around the cars. As she left me where I wanted to be, she smiled. "Syrian people are kind people," she said in English. The domed Army Museum, part of a 16th-century caravanserai built for pilgrims on their way to Mecca, surrounds gardens where planes and tanks are displayed, along with a sputnik - Syrians were part of the Soviet Union's space program. Inside the museum, visitors find glass cases of antique swords and daggers with elegantly decorated - damascened - blades and with handles inlaid with mother-of-pearl. There also are grim mementos of 20th-century wars against the French, who had the League of Nations mandate to rule Syria from 1920 to 1946, and of Syria's wars against Israel in the 1960s and '70s. This area is also the site of a mosque and an alley of handicraft shops selling inlaid wooden boxes, backgammon sets, Bedouin headdresses, pottery, glass and silk. The National Museum is particularly notable for an exhibit of the world's first known alphabet, from the 14th-century B.C. in Ugarit on the Mediterranean coast, and for a reconstructed A.D. second-century synagogue. I walked from there back to the covered souks of the Old City and then to the Omayad Mosque, one of the most important mosques remaining from the early days of Islam. The site once was home to a Roman temple and then a church when Damascus became part of the Christian Byzantine Empire in the fourth century. The church was dedicated to John the Baptist, whose head was said to be enshrined there. The Arabs conquered the city and made it their capital in the seventh century, but they continued to allow Christian worship in the church. Even after this enormous mosque was built in the eighth century, the shrine to St. John the Baptist was kept. Although I had removed my shoes and was wearing an ankle-length skirt and a head scarf when I attempted to enter, I was sternly stopped and directed to a cloaking room, where I paid to cover myself with a long gown. In devout Islam, only the face and hands of a woman should be seen outside the home. In the cloaking room, a too-eager guide took me in tow. He pointed out the green-domed structure containing the head of John the Baptist - like Jesus, John the Baptist is a prophet in Islam. He also showed me the tomb of Saladin, great warrior of the crusades, and of Hussein, a son of the prophet Muhammad. Then from the courtyard outside, I viewed the three eighth-century minarets and the green-and- gold mosaics representing scenes of heaven that are high on the open courtyard wall. Later that evening, I walked the busy, narrow, shop-lined "street which is called Straight." There, Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of Christians, who had been blinded by God and converted outside Damascus, regained his sight. It was not far away, after he had angered Jews and Romans alike by preaching of Christ and was in danger of being murdered, that Paul was lowered from a window in a basket so he could escape. Little St. Paul's Chapel in Bab Kisan marks this supposed spot. On my second day, I set off with van and driver on the two-hour trip across the desert to the Krak des Chevaliers. British adventurer and scholar Lawrence of Arabia - Thomas Edward Lawrence - regarded this 11th-century fortification as the best crusader castle still standing in the world. We left Damascus on a three-lane highway. In the distance, the gold- gray mountains that mark the border with Lebanon rose beneath the bright blue sky. Although my 27-year-old driver, Mumad-Ahmad, spoke no English, we managed a conversation of sorts with the aid of an Arabic- English dictionary. Soon the mountains became sand hills with a few cypresses and pines and yellow flowers growing beside the road. Occasionally, we saw a water tower or a gas station or a scattering of sand-colored cement houses that designated a town. The vehicles with us on the road - there were not many - were mostly tour buses with names like Happy Travel or trucks whose loads were covered by flapping canvas. Sometimes, at makeshift roadside shelters, a pedestrian - a Bedouin with a flowing red-and-white-checked headdress or a veiled woman in black - would be waiting and hoping for a ride from a passing vehicle. In time, the sand hills became endless desert. Often the roadside trees had been blown almost flat by the wind. Eventually, we were passing through the sprawling village of Al-Husn and climbing a hill toward the Krak. The castle is situated in a gap in the mountains that lie between Syria's neighbors, Turkey and Lebanon. The present moated castle, with 13 outside towers and five inside, was constructed in the 12th century by the crusaders. Once again, an eager guide forced his services on me. As we climbed ramps and parapets and explored dank zigzagging passageways, I learned that 4,000 men and 400 horses had been billeted in the castle in its heyday. Next, we set off for Palmyra. We passed eucalyptus trees and pines and roadside fruit sellers offering enormous oranges and strawberries. Then we were in the desert again, with only a little scrub grass alleviating the monotony of the sand. Here and there, we passed a black-robed shepherd tending a few sheep. Once, where there were shepherds' tents in the distance, Mumad-Ahmad asked if I would like to stop to take pictures. It soon became clear that he wanted to stop to pray. He scrambled out of the van, went down to a stream to wash and then returned to take his prayer rug from the dashboard, shake it out, and lay it down in the road in front of the van for his prayers. We reached Palmyra - the Bride of the Desert - just as the sun was going down. The sand in the distance had turned blue in the shadow of the pale gold mountains.. Mumad-Ahmad left me there to return to Damascus. The following morning, I was awakened before dawn by the call to prayer. Then the birds began to sing. Below my hotel window, gold-pink flat-roofed houses and a grove of palm trees came into view with the sun. I spent the morning climbing over Palmyra's golden ruins. Originally a stopping place on the old Silk Road from China and India to Europe, it is said to have existed as long ago as the 10th century B.C. In those days, it was known as Tadmor, the City of Dates, and indeed, as I passed small shops on my way to the ruins, shopkeepers hurried out to wish me "Welcome" and proffer gifts of fresh dates. The city became Palmyra, the City of Palms, after the Roman conquest in the first and second centuries. Since 1929, extensive excavations have been unearthing pre-Roman temples, Roman tombs and funerary towers. I climbed over the remains of colonnaded Roman streets and into the Roman Emperor Diocletian's baths camp. Outside the ruins, once again, eager locals offered to guide me or sell me souvenirs. One, over a cup of coffee with cardamom, tried to sell me a carpet. An entrepreneur on a motorcycle sought to tempt me with a string of beads until he realized I was American. Then he shouted, "George Bush, no," and sped away. A few minutes later, he was back. "George Bush, no. America, yes," he declared this time. That afternoon, I took the public bus to Aleppo. Getting it, however, was a bit iffy. In the bus terminals, prospective passengers cluster around a table buying tickets. Tickets are sold only after the bus has arrived and only if there is space on it after some have disembarked. To buy a ticket, one must provide a passport or some other identity paper. An English-speaking worker with a Croatian oil company helped me buy my ticket for the first leg of the journey and, when I had to change buses, put me on the right one again. On buses - because so much of the travel is through hot desert - a porter fills and refills plastic cups with water at each seat. Seats are numbered, and one must beware of sitting in the wrong one because seats are so scarce. There is television entertainment. In 18th-century B.C. Aleppo, which claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, I visited miles of covered souks and bought the yellow-green olive-oil soap for which it is famous and a Kurdish rug. I passed butcher stalls of hanging carcasses, nut and fruit stores overflowing with almonds and pistachios and figs and dates. I visited the Great Mosque where Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, is said to be buried, and the 12th-century Citadel that rises at the edge of the Old City and was built to keep the crusaders out of northern Syria. At the Citadel, I met two young university students. One was in bluejeans but with her hair under a hijab, or scarf; the other wore a knee-length dress, and her hair flowed loosely. We began to talk, and soon they invited me across the city to see their very modern university and their dorm. From Aleppo, I went with a car and driver to see the pillar on which St. Simeon Stylites, to keep his admirers from touching him, had lived and preached in the fifth century. There, on pine-covered hills, are the picturesque ruins of the once monumental Romanesque church that honored him. It was Friday, a holiday, and the wildflower-covered site was filled with families and schoolchildren. A group of teenagers, easily recognizing me as a foreigner, soon were exclaiming, "Welcome. What is your name? How are you?" One was offering a gift of a cone of bright red ice. Another, learning I was an American, handed me a bouquet of poppies he had plucked. A third gave me a key chain. On the front, I could see that there was writing in Arabic, but it was not until I was in the car returning to Aleppo that I turned it over and saw that it said, in English, "I love you." As the Damascus woman had said, the Syrians I had met on my visit had been kind indeed. ··· The United States has sanctions against Syria, so there are no direct flights between the two countries. International carriers fly from Washington to Damascus with a change of planes at their European hubs. Cypriot Airlines flies from Lanarca, Cyprus, and Syrian Air from London and other European capitals. A visa, costing $100, is required from the Syrian Embassy, 2215 Wyoming Ave. NW. |
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Visiting Syria
"Mike" The kindness of Syrians Is Syria in Europe? |
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Visiting Syria
nothing else to do ??
"Mike" a écrit dans le message de ps.com... news.google.com The kindness of Syrians August 4, 2007 By Phyllis Meras - DAMASCUS, Syria -- Friends said I must not visit Syria. What was I thinking? It was much too dangerous. The government was too totalitarian. Wasn't Syria suspected of playing a major role in the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri? It bordered on Iraq and was filled with refugees who preyed upon the unsuspecting. The U.S. State Department was against all but essential travel. Why did I want to go there anyway? I replied that I had always wanted to see the walled Old City of Damascus, renowned throughout the Middle East. I wanted to see the "street which is called Straight," where the Bible says St. Paul stayed in the first century. I wanted to see the winding souks of old Aleppo, the Greco-Roman ruins at Palmyra and the Krak des Chevaliers, the largest and best-preserved crusader castle in the world. I didn't know it then, but I would find out that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had decided to go to Syria at the same time I chose. Because I speak no Arabic and had just five days to spend in the country, I made hotel arrangements and some travel plans in advance. For hard-to-reach destinations, I would have a car and a driver; for intercity travel, I would go by public bus. My first overnight lodging was old, slightly fusty and on a busy street. It was, however, within walking distance of the Old City and the National and Army museums. Friends who had visited Syria had told me that these, along with the Old City, were worth seeing. So, the first morning, I set off. What I wanted to see, it turned out, was all within walking distance but situated on a multilane thoroughfare along which traffic roared without stopping. There were no street lights and no policemen, only a pedestrian bridge here or there over the highway. However, before I found a bridge, as I stood, immobilized, on a traffic island, a woman took me by the arm and helped me dodge around the cars. As she left me where I wanted to be, she smiled. "Syrian people are kind people," she said in English. The domed Army Museum, part of a 16th-century caravanserai built for pilgrims on their way to Mecca, surrounds gardens where planes and tanks are displayed, along with a sputnik - Syrians were part of the Soviet Union's space program. Inside the museum, visitors find glass cases of antique swords and daggers with elegantly decorated - damascened - blades and with handles inlaid with mother-of-pearl. There also are grim mementos of 20th-century wars against the French, who had the League of Nations mandate to rule Syria from 1920 to 1946, and of Syria's wars against Israel in the 1960s and '70s. This area is also the site of a mosque and an alley of handicraft shops selling inlaid wooden boxes, backgammon sets, Bedouin headdresses, pottery, glass and silk. The National Museum is particularly notable for an exhibit of the world's first known alphabet, from the 14th-century B.C. in Ugarit on the Mediterranean coast, and for a reconstructed A.D. second-century synagogue. I walked from there back to the covered souks of the Old City and then to the Omayad Mosque, one of the most important mosques remaining from the early days of Islam. The site once was home to a Roman temple and then a church when Damascus became part of the Christian Byzantine Empire in the fourth century. The church was dedicated to John the Baptist, whose head was said to be enshrined there. The Arabs conquered the city and made it their capital in the seventh century, but they continued to allow Christian worship in the church. Even after this enormous mosque was built in the eighth century, the shrine to St. John the Baptist was kept. Although I had removed my shoes and was wearing an ankle-length skirt and a head scarf when I attempted to enter, I was sternly stopped and directed to a cloaking room, where I paid to cover myself with a long gown. In devout Islam, only the face and hands of a woman should be seen outside the home. In the cloaking room, a too-eager guide took me in tow. He pointed out the green-domed structure containing the head of John the Baptist - like Jesus, John the Baptist is a prophet in Islam. He also showed me the tomb of Saladin, great warrior of the crusades, and of Hussein, a son of the prophet Muhammad. Then from the courtyard outside, I viewed the three eighth-century minarets and the green-and- gold mosaics representing scenes of heaven that are high on the open courtyard wall. Later that evening, I walked the busy, narrow, shop-lined "street which is called Straight." There, Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of Christians, who had been blinded by God and converted outside Damascus, regained his sight. It was not far away, after he had angered Jews and Romans alike by preaching of Christ and was in danger of being murdered, that Paul was lowered from a window in a basket so he could escape. Little St. Paul's Chapel in Bab Kisan marks this supposed spot. On my second day, I set off with van and driver on the two-hour trip across the desert to the Krak des Chevaliers. British adventurer and scholar Lawrence of Arabia - Thomas Edward Lawrence - regarded this 11th-century fortification as the best crusader castle still standing in the world. We left Damascus on a three-lane highway. In the distance, the gold- gray mountains that mark the border with Lebanon rose beneath the bright blue sky. Although my 27-year-old driver, Mumad-Ahmad, spoke no English, we managed a conversation of sorts with the aid of an Arabic- English dictionary. Soon the mountains became sand hills with a few cypresses and pines and yellow flowers growing beside the road. Occasionally, we saw a water tower or a gas station or a scattering of sand-colored cement houses that designated a town. The vehicles with us on the road - there were not many - were mostly tour buses with names like Happy Travel or trucks whose loads were covered by flapping canvas. Sometimes, at makeshift roadside shelters, a pedestrian - a Bedouin with a flowing red-and-white-checked headdress or a veiled woman in black - would be waiting and hoping for a ride from a passing vehicle. In time, the sand hills became endless desert. Often the roadside trees had been blown almost flat by the wind. Eventually, we were passing through the sprawling village of Al-Husn and climbing a hill toward the Krak. The castle is situated in a gap in the mountains that lie between Syria's neighbors, Turkey and Lebanon. The present moated castle, with 13 outside towers and five inside, was constructed in the 12th century by the crusaders. Once again, an eager guide forced his services on me. As we climbed ramps and parapets and explored dank zigzagging passageways, I learned that 4,000 men and 400 horses had been billeted in the castle in its heyday. Next, we set off for Palmyra. We passed eucalyptus trees and pines and roadside fruit sellers offering enormous oranges and strawberries. Then we were in the desert again, with only a little scrub grass alleviating the monotony of the sand. Here and there, we passed a black-robed shepherd tending a few sheep. Once, where there were shepherds' tents in the distance, Mumad-Ahmad asked if I would like to stop to take pictures. It soon became clear that he wanted to stop to pray. He scrambled out of the van, went down to a stream to wash and then returned to take his prayer rug from the dashboard, shake it out, and lay it down in the road in front of the van for his prayers. We reached Palmyra - the Bride of the Desert - just as the sun was going down. The sand in the distance had turned blue in the shadow of the pale gold mountains.. Mumad-Ahmad left me there to return to Damascus. The following morning, I was awakened before dawn by the call to prayer. Then the birds began to sing. Below my hotel window, gold-pink flat-roofed houses and a grove of palm trees came into view with the sun. I spent the morning climbing over Palmyra's golden ruins. Originally a stopping place on the old Silk Road from China and India to Europe, it is said to have existed as long ago as the 10th century B.C. In those days, it was known as Tadmor, the City of Dates, and indeed, as I passed small shops on my way to the ruins, shopkeepers hurried out to wish me "Welcome" and proffer gifts of fresh dates. The city became Palmyra, the City of Palms, after the Roman conquest in the first and second centuries. Since 1929, extensive excavations have been unearthing pre-Roman temples, Roman tombs and funerary towers. I climbed over the remains of colonnaded Roman streets and into the Roman Emperor Diocletian's baths camp. Outside the ruins, once again, eager locals offered to guide me or sell me souvenirs. One, over a cup of coffee with cardamom, tried to sell me a carpet. An entrepreneur on a motorcycle sought to tempt me with a string of beads until he realized I was American. Then he shouted, "George Bush, no," and sped away. A few minutes later, he was back. "George Bush, no. America, yes," he declared this time. That afternoon, I took the public bus to Aleppo. Getting it, however, was a bit iffy. In the bus terminals, prospective passengers cluster around a table buying tickets. Tickets are sold only after the bus has arrived and only if there is space on it after some have disembarked. To buy a ticket, one must provide a passport or some other identity paper. An English-speaking worker with a Croatian oil company helped me buy my ticket for the first leg of the journey and, when I had to change buses, put me on the right one again. On buses - because so much of the travel is through hot desert - a porter fills and refills plastic cups with water at each seat. Seats are numbered, and one must beware of sitting in the wrong one because seats are so scarce. There is television entertainment. In 18th-century B.C. Aleppo, which claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, I visited miles of covered souks and bought the yellow-green olive-oil soap for which it is famous and a Kurdish rug. I passed butcher stalls of hanging carcasses, nut and fruit stores overflowing with almonds and pistachios and figs and dates. I visited the Great Mosque where Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, is said to be buried, and the 12th-century Citadel that rises at the edge of the Old City and was built to keep the crusaders out of northern Syria. At the Citadel, I met two young university students. One was in bluejeans but with her hair under a hijab, or scarf; the other wore a knee-length dress, and her hair flowed loosely. We began to talk, and soon they invited me across the city to see their very modern university and their dorm. From Aleppo, I went with a car and driver to see the pillar on which St. Simeon Stylites, to keep his admirers from touching him, had lived and preached in the fifth century. There, on pine-covered hills, are the picturesque ruins of the once monumental Romanesque church that honored him. It was Friday, a holiday, and the wildflower-covered site was filled with families and schoolchildren. A group of teenagers, easily recognizing me as a foreigner, soon were exclaiming, "Welcome. What is your name? How are you?" One was offering a gift of a cone of bright red ice. Another, learning I was an American, handed me a bouquet of poppies he had plucked. A third gave me a key chain. On the front, I could see that there was writing in Arabic, but it was not until I was in the car returning to Aleppo that I turned it over and saw that it said, in English, "I love you." As the Damascus woman had said, the Syrians I had met on my visit had been kind indeed. ··· The United States has sanctions against Syria, so there are no direct flights between the two countries. International carriers fly from Washington to Damascus with a change of planes at their European hubs. Cypriot Airlines flies from Lanarca, Cyprus, and Syrian Air from London and other European capitals. A visa, costing $100, is required from the Syrian Embassy, 2215 Wyoming Ave. NW. |
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