I had set my alarm for 7 am, and gradually managed to crawl out of the lovely bed I had enjoyed so much. Then I feasted on my remaining bananas, and got dressed. I met Eric in the corridor, and we quickly packed our stuff, handed in the padlocks which served as room keys, and headed off to the train ticket office. It looked shut. There were some people sitting around, but naturally they spoke only Arabic. Eventually we found someone who was in a position to inform us that the train left at 8.45 in the evening, not the morning. I could have broken down and cried. How was I to survive another 12 hours in this dump? Eric was going to be OK - he had a ticket for the 2.30 bus to Aleppo. But would I manage to get on? I had my fears, my doubts. We rushed off to the bus station, and eventually managed to persuade the ticket guy to sell us the ticket we wanted. Then we collapsed, relieved. I had a ticket in the very back row of the bus, next to Eric. Il hammdu lilleh. We dumped our bags in the office/cafe, and sat down for a drink and a rest, and perhaps a prayer of thanks to God. Things started to get silly. Eric took a photograph of his ticket, with a label saying "Ticket to Freedom". He also tried to photograph the water bottle. It was called "Dreikich". Quite similar to "Dreckich", dirty in German - how apt. We decided to leave before people realised we were taking the piss.
We went to the bridge again, and then decided to have a quiet sit by the river. We chose a pleasant, shady spot - and were promptly swamped by a load of irritating kids, who kept on pestering us and speaking to us in Arabic, although they knew full well we couldn’t understand them. We told them we were train drivers from Finland. In the end the only way we knew to get some peace was to escape. So we did. We went on to the railway station, just to see what was happening there. Nothing. Actually, something was. A train had just arrived, from Hassake or Al Qamishli. Two pristine (for Syria) Deutsche Reichsbahn carriages. Then we tried to hitch a lift with one of those silly motortrikes, but the guy driving it wasn’t interested. His loss, not ours. We walked back across the bridge, trying to get some girls to agree to be photographed. We failed. So we resolved to go back to the hotel, sit on the balcony and take photos using our zoom lenses from there. However, the hotel bloke would have nothing of it, so we had to leave again. Just at this point one of the most striking incidents of the entire trip occurred.
First of all, there was a commotion. Lots of police arrived on the scene, smartly dressed off, and then cleared the cross-roads by the Hotel Damas. Then some fat Mercedes passed by. Obviously some dignitary or another. The President himself, perhaps. No. Well, whoever it was passed by quickly, and then vanished. Then the real fun started. The police surrounded and attacked a nut vendor. They turned his cart over in the street, and then threw it onto a waiting van. When he resisted, they began beating him up. We were dumbfounded. He was only saved from worse by his friends dragging him away. Then the police systematically worked their way down the shopping area, street by street. They sealed it off, then worked their way along. Eric and I got caught up in the midst of this, and it certainly was anything but pleasant. Our cameras vanished into our bags almost instantly. Even so, I thought we were in trouble, as one particularly evil-looking guy in a beret and sunshades spun round right in front of us. Fortunately he forced his way between us and disappeared somewhere behind us - we didn’t care where to. We concluded it was time to get the hell out of there. All around us, shopkeepers were desperately gathering their wares and fleeing. The police brought in a great big lorry (or rather, skip on wheels) to cart off the spoils.
We went on ahead, and got chatting to a shopkeeper about what was going on. He made us tea and then coffee, and tried to explain, as we got a grandstand view of the performance when it passed his shop. Apparently they were after unlicensed traders - or, more likely, traders who had paid insufficient baksheesh. On this occasion I was from England, but Eric thought it wiser to make me a writer of children’s stories. I had said I was a writer, but apparently that is not the best thing to say. I suppose writers tend to be perceived as troublemakers in many parts of the world. Here Eric also met the Saudi he had met the previous day, and had been avoiding ever since. We declined an invitation to lunch on the grounds that we were catching a bus soon. If only it had been true.
We lunched on a falafel sandwich - edible but dull - and went back to the bus station. We sat down for a drink, and were (unfortunately) joined by the guy behind the bar. I felt sorry for the guy - he meant well, and he tried hard, but his English was of such a low level that it was very hard work listening to him, or rather understanding him. And we were tired and just wanted some peace and quiet. Also he had a stupid little moustache. Then came the point where he made a big mistake. He addressed me. "You like Deir ez Zawr?" Now I can lie. I can lie very well, if I need to. However, this was asking too much. So I answered truthfully. "No." Poor guy. His chin dropped. I had shattered his illusion - every Syrian seems to be convinced that his home town is the bee’s knees, no matter how great a dump it is. Poor guy, as I said.
Come 2.30 we went outside for our bus. We made ourselves comfortable on the window ledge. We had to - it was going to be a long wait. So we sat there for one and a half hours, being pestered by urchins wanting to carry our bags (where to, I ask - there was no bloody bus!), being stared at by young kids (we took to growling at them - they found it funny, and it made them go away for a moment or two, at least), being poisoned by the fumes, our eardrums being destroyed by the incessant noise of Syrian towns. Our fuses were growing shorter by the minute. We felt like we were trapped in a day from hell - Deir ez Zawr (or Drecksau, as we renamed it by this time) was hell - and we were never going to escape. Just as hope was beginning to fade - the bus arrived. Il hammdu lilleh.
We were in the very back row, with a group of young men around us. This was going to be a long 5 hours to Aleppo. The bus left at 16.05, so we guessed we’d get to Aleppo around 9pm. The road was bumpy in the extreme, so I considered it wise to accept Eric’s offer of a travel sickness tablet. I added it to the other tablets I was taking - the four giant pills that Dr Ahmed prescribed me in Palmyra. The journey was tedious. We stocked up on food at the cafe we visited at the half-way point, but much of it was revolting - the cold falafel certainly were. Later on during the journey we got talking to the Arabs around us. They were a bit older than us, but incredibly childish. The conductor (if he can be called that) came along and started to take the piss out of us. The others found this amusing. They found it even more amusing when we started to take the piss out of him instead. He went off and sulked for the remainder of the trip. We finally got to Aleppo, ran over a cyclist (his bike, at least - he appeared to be unhurt), and got to the bus station. Where the hell are we, we thought. Time to find the Baron hotel. We were tired and thirsty - we wanted the bar in the Baron, to be precise.
We made our way out of the bus station, and headed off in the direction of the town centre. A taxi driver wanted to give us a lift. We declined. He persisted. We declined more firmly. More persistence, leading to Eric losing his temper with him and unleashing several strong swear-words, mostly in German. The cabby shrank away, looking offended. Why can’t they take no to mean no? They really do bring it upon themselves. We asked a local for directions to the Baron. He said he’d take us there. We walked into town, past a sign pointing to Baron Street on the left, further in, then took a left, then another, and then a right into Baron Street. The guy was still looking for the hotel when I was climbing the stairs leading up to it. As I have said before, never accept a Syrian’s help, you’ll regret it. Friendly but utterly useless. He invited us back to his house, but we declined, claiming to be meeting friends here. The truth was, we’d had enough for one day and just wanted to collapse in a heap in some bar.
The Baron was an elegant structure, but somewhat decayed. There was a nice lounge and bar, and an impressive staircase and hall. I asked after a room. They had a triple, no bath (costing the same amount as one with a bath) at $33 per night. It hadn’t been cleaned yet, but would we care to look at it? OK, we think, let’s try it - after all, I had already spent $25 in Hama, and this place had more style, although it did look less clean. We went up the stairs, and I was about to enter the room when Eric dragged me back, looking mortified. Before us sat the most enormous spider we had ever seen (not in captivity), more like a tarantula than anything else. It scurried off, encouraged by the porter. He claimed it to be harmless, but it was not my bedfellow of choice for that evening. Furthermore, the room was a dive. We said we’d think about it.
Eric deposited me in the hall and went off in search of another hotel. I was at the end of my tether - I was even considering booking myself in here regardless of the dirt and wildlife. After about 25 minutes Eric returned, with the news that he had found us a place. We went off with our baggage, promising to return for a beer or two. The hotel was quiet, the room clean, the bed comfortable (Baron beds were described to me as 4 wheel drive terrain), the owner a mad old French-speaking crone and the price reasonable - under 400 Syrian. That’ll do nicely. The downside was that we could only stay one night, but she promised to send us off to another good hotel the following day.
We returned to the bar at the Baron, and were told it would be closing soon. Then we were informed that we could buy beer there and drink it in the lounge, so it was not as bad as it at first appeared. The beer was good but expensive. At the end of a day like this, we really enjoyed it - but then again, we would have enjoyed almost anything. We were joined by first a horde of Austrians, who fortunately left us in peace after a short time, then by a Yank who seemed quite civilised, as he lives in England, and finally we encountered a pair of English guys who had been touring around.
Our account of Drecksau amused two Arabs who were sitting in the lounge watching Egyptian television. It turned out they were Jordanian Americans, who had emigrated when they were children. Their mother lives in Damascus, and they were over visiting. Their opinion of the country was, if anything, even lower than ours was at that time. So we spent the rest of the evening slagging the country off very loudly and publicly. Reem and Yaqub gave us their phone number in Damascus for when we got down there, and told us to look them up - hopefully it would make the country more bearable for all of us! Then we went back to the hotel (where they were scrubbing the stairs - I was most impressed!) and straight to bed. We would have to be up and out early the next day.
Last Updated on 13 November, 1999