We rose late (stuff getting up early, we were knackered), showered in what passed for the bathroom (the bath was full of sheets being soaked, so we had to make do with showering in the middle of the room by the drain), paid, and were accompanied by one of the staff to another hotel, down lots of market streets covered with signs in Russian. The hotel looked OK, the Golden Something or Other, so we took the room - 325 Syrian for the night sounded OK to us. The guy running it was a friendly young chap with a beard (made a change from the usual moustache), with good English. We told him about Drecksau, and our experiences there, and in the rest of Syria, and our general feelings about the place. He appeared to sympathise.
We headed off to start with our usual initial activity - finding out how the hell we were going to get out of the place. We decided to start with the station. On our way there we encountered some dodgy bloke who took us to be French, and invited us to the Hammam, as his guest. Meet him at the clock tower at 9pm that evening. Eric conveniently forgot his French, so I had to try to talk us out of the situation. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we adopted the simplest solution: just don’t turn up, and hope never to meet the guy again. Onwards we tramped, into a pleasant city park, with a statue of someone other than bleeding Assad (Arschgesicht, in our parlance) - Baybars, perhaps.
We sat down, and were (naturally) soon joined by a young Syrian. He was tedious in his English, but actually quite likeable, so we took pity on him. He claimed to be in class 3 in English, but he had difficulty with complex sentence structures, like "I from Aleppo". So we set about teaching him. We taught him how to say "I am from Aleppo", then moved on to comparatives ("Aleppo is hotter than London. London is colder than Aleppo"), and finished up explaining the difference between "o" and "oo". I don’t think we got very far, but at least he showed willing. Just a pity he didn’t show any ability while he was at it. By the time we had finished, we had attracted a small crowd. A few guys volunteered to show us to the station and to help us sort out our train. We trooped off to the station - a grand building, shame there’s only about three trains per day - to find that there are no daytime trains to Damascus. Bugger, I thought, it looks like I’ll never get to try out a Syrian train, and to see whether the story about the stoning is true or not - apparently, trains are regularly stoned by people in the villages they pass. Why, I do not know. Boredom? Resentment?
Next we had to get rid of our entourage. We pretended that we just wanted to sit down for a while and consider our next move. They soon grew bored, and strolled off. We decided to have a look at the Syrian state railways (CFS - Chemin de Fer de Syrie) carriages, to see just how awful they were. Pretty awful is the answer, but I’ve seen worse in eastern Europe. The only real problem was the toilet, one of the usual squatting jobs. How one is meant to use one of these on a moving train will remain a mystery to me until my next venture into this part of the world, at least. On the outside we noticed that the carriages are pock-marked, and many of the windows cracked in spider’s web fashion - so the story about the stonings appears to be true. Back in the station building we inspected the mural adorning the main hall. What a wonderful piece of propaganda. So subtle.
Back into town, via a rather Parisian-looking cafe and a revolting Nescafe (at least some things are consistent around the globe). Then we asked for directions to the Karnak office to buy bus tickets to Damascus the following day. The guy led us there and then (true to form) invited us to his home. Again we had to find some excuse, because we really couldn’t afford the time - it was already mid-afternoon, and we had seen hardly anything of Aleppo yet. We bought tickets for the 15.00 Karnak coach to Damascus the following day, and got front row seats for a change. We didn’t want to support the state by travelling Karnak, but what choice did we have?
Finally we got to do our bit of sightseeing. We headed off to see the Citadel, with the plan to go back to our hotel through the souk - which Rod had informed me was excellent, and which I had read elsewhere was the best in the middle east. We reached the citadel, or rather the cafes in front of it. Then we found out that they were charging 200 Syrian to get in, plus another 500 to take a camera or 1000 for a camcorder, we opted to admire it from the outside (and very admirable it was, too - a stunning gate complex which rendered the place near-impregnable), but not to be conned by the ministry of tourism. We boycotted the place.
As we sat at one of the cafes, and Eric managed to get a reasonable deal on soft drinks (How much? 50. OK, and what is the non-tourist price? 30. OK, two at the non-tourist rate, then.), we got chatting to a local shopkeeper, who also had very good English. It appeared he knew about us, because he suddenly twigged who we were. His friend in the hotel had told him about us. That, of course, exposed my claim to be Czech (a nationality I had not tried to be until then) to be a lie, and it also made us somewhat suspicious. Anyway, we got chatting, and started to pour out our grievances to him, just like to his friend - we didn’t care if they were security police or not by this point. We could add the annoyance caused by the Syrian authorities’ attitude towards tourists - in other words, the official policy of ripping off tourists at all attractions, irrespective of the value for money involved. Like the other guy, he agreed with much of what we said - that the government is shooting itself in the foot in the long term, as tourists will not come back, and eventually the country will get a bad reputation as a tourist attraction.
We decided we had enough of incriminating ourselves with the security police (I felt Eric was going too far when he started to complain that you aren’t free to speak your mind, etc.), so we headed off to the souk. It was a complex of narrow tunnels bordered by shops, and full of tourists getting in the way, locals shopping, shopkeepers flogging their wares and lunatics travelling through it on donkeys and motorbikes. Good fun, all the same. I finally got round to buying a Kaffiyeh, after much haggling. It really was a classic case of haggling - them naming a price far above the value, me responding with a fraction of the price, them looking as though I had just called their parentage into doubt and responding with a new price, me turning away and walking off in disgust, them calling me back, etc. They tried to palm me off with an inferior product, then with a damaged one, but in the end I got my brand new Kaffiyeh (as worn by the king of Saudi Arabia, or so they claimed) for a very reasonable 175 Syrian, after an initial asking price of 300 Syrian. Perhaps I could have gone lower, but it was already less than the 200 I had been willing to pay for it, so I was happy.
We carried on to the spice section, and entered into another world. Spices with the wildest names, smells and looks abounded. Eric was in search of something called Mallakher (or similar), a green tea-like substance allegedly used in the preparation of a delicious sauce. Its problem was that it is rather bulky, as it only came in leaf format, with stalks still attached. It then has to be ground in the hand, rather than by machine. Thus one kilo took up a relatively huge amount of space, which I simply couldn’t afford. So I settled for a mixture recommended to me by Eric. They call it Sa’atar, which is ground thyme, with a sandy texture, and they add Sumac, which remains unidentified by me to this day, and Simsim, sesame seeds. You mix it with oil and spread it on a pizza base, apparently. With these fresh supplies we returned to the hotel, picking up some delicious sesame biscuits en route. At the hotel we met our friend again - and it turned out the shopkeeper from the citadel had been in touch with him, and had informed him of our conversation. Now we began to be worried. Surely these guys were security police. Yet they remained very friendly throughout. So we carried on regardless.
That evening I engaged in a little religious intolerance. We were lying on our beds in the hotel, when this bleeding muezzin started wailing for evening prayers. He carried on, and on, and on, and on...In the end we were reduced to fits of laughter every time he stopped, and we thought he had finished, and then he would start the next verse. I suddenly remembered that the longest prayer call can be 247 verses long...So I leaned out of the window and shouted "Why don’t you just fuck off and take your God with you" before I could help myself. Shortly afterwards the wailing stopped. We had visions of the muezzin in his turban and beard standing there looking shocked, drawing his Allah back into his Aladdin’s lamp and stealing himself away. Perhaps the Moslems are right (see also section on driving), and there is no god but God. But even if that is the case, I’m sure he’s sick and tired of being reminded of this five times a day from every corner of the Islamic world! So the muezzin said his "Il hammdu lilleh" and put a sock in it. We had to agree with him - il hammdu lilleh indeed, peace at last.
We went to the post office, where I finally dispatched my assortment of post cards, and then we found a restaurant on a rooftop next to the Baron hotel, where the food, frankly, was abysmal, but at least it was safe and inexpensive. The usual mix of chips, tasteless bread and hommos. And a truly revolting aubergine dip. However, we discovered that the shisha/nargilla (Hubble-bubble or water pipe) served up there was excellent - the owner mixes up the (Egyptian) tobacco himself, and it is, apparently, of a very high quality. We resolved to go to the Baron bar for a drink or two, and then to come back for a smoke. In the Baron we met an East German who had lived in Aleppo for a couple of years, working for Siemens. We claimed to be Germans, too, and he didn’t twig. Then again, he was too drunk to notice anyway. We didn’t entirely trust him, so in our conversation we remained wary of him, sticking to safe, non-political matters. Who knows whether or not he was supplementing his income with a little work for the state? Fortunately he soon left, and we joined a couple of Kiwis for a while. They were typically uncouth antipodean travellers, and we all grew bored with each other after only a short chat (though they perked up when I told them England had beaten Australia in the Rugby League world cup opening match).
The bar steward came up offering to change money, at the standard black market rate of 48 Syrian instead of the official 42. As I was getting a bit low, I changed $50. I got the same amount as I would have done for $60 in a bank - why didn’t I discover the black market earlier? We left the Kiwis and went back next door for a beer and a smoke. The restaurant was crowded now, crowded with locals rather than tourists, so it must be an OK place. The beer - Al Sharq - was pretty foul, but the shisha was excellent - although Eric had most of it, I did enjoy the few puffs I took. Only towards the end did it start to get a bit rough. I pondered whether I should buy myself one of these pipes after all. They are quite pretty, and if I’m going to end up using it as well...It was a very pleasant end to quite an agreeable day.
Last Updated on 13 November, 1999