Chatwin Soaring

From Songlines, 1987:

"I had a presentiment that the 'travelling' phase of my life might be passing. I felt, before the malaise of settlement crept over me, that I should reopen those notebooks. I should set down on paper a résumé of the ideas, quotations and encounters which had amused and obsessed me; and which I hoped would shed light on what is, for me, the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness.

Pascal, in one of his gloomier pensées, gave it as his opinion that all our miseries stemmed from a single cause: our inability to remain quietly in a room.

Why, he asked, must a man with sufficient to live on feel drawn to divert himself on long sea voyages? To dwell in another town? To go off in search of a peppercorn? Or go off to war and break skulls?

Later, on further reflection, having discovered the cause of our misfortunes, he wished to understand the reason for them, he found one very good reason: namely, the natural unhappiness of our weak mortal condition; so unhappy that when we gave to it all our attention, nothing could console us.

One thing alone could alleviate our despair, and that was distraction (divertissement): yet this was the worst of our misfortunes, for in distraction we were prevented from thinking about ourselves and were gradually brought to ruin.

Could it be, I wondered, that our need for distraction, our mania for the new, was, in essence, an instinctive migratory urge akin to that of birds in autumn?

All the Great Teachers have preached that Man, originally, was a 'wanderer in the scorching and barren wilderness of this world' – the words are those of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor – and that to rediscover his humanity, he must slough off attachments and take to the road.

My two most recent notebooks were crammed with jottings taken in South Africa, where I had examined, at first hand, certain evidence on the origin of our species. What I learned there – together with what I now knew about the Songlines – seemed to confirm the conjecture I had toyed with for so long: that Natural Selection has designed us – from the structure of our brain-cells to the structure of our big toe – for a career of seasonal journeys on foot through a blistering land of thorn-scrub or desert.

If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert – then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison."

-Bruce Chatwin

Postcard From Sydney

Hilary and I landed in Sydney on a rainy Friday morning and within a few hours I was choosing between kangaroo or crocodile for lunch. We had missed Thanksgiving all together, and in midair no less, so I went with the kangaroo. You gotta take it slow in Australia.

I'd never been to this country and I am grateful to my sister for the opportunity to spend a few weeks in a place so far away yet eerily similar to home. Australia is a bizarro America; it's like a warm Canada. I sense macro-familiarity but get lost in the details. They drive on the left in cars the color of toothbrushes. Much of the food seems the invention of Dr. Seuss. Ditto the flora & fauna. Women's dress styles are 1980s flashy and book cover designs are glossy and on the nose, like fakes from the movies. Cafes sell coffee at every street corner, but they pronounce it "cuffee". Australians do things to vowels many Americans would find difficult to abide.

Our hotel overlooks Darling Harbor, near an area called The Rocks for the reason that it sits atop a rocky cliff, like so much of Sydney. It was in The Rocks that I enjoyed my kangaroo burger. In the tiny bookstore I was pleased to browse a book of Australian poetry (who knew?) and discover the existence of one Banjo Paterson, the man with the most envious name in history. Paterson was a 19th century poet and the composer of "Waltzing Matilda", the Australian national anthem and the greatest drinking song of all time. (The second greatest drinking song was co-written by friend Skeely. It contains the line "but when I get so pissed, I don't toss about me fists".)

We walked to Surrey Hills for dinner our first night, along the way passing through a neighborhood I would describe as the Sydney Castro, featuring your full line of rainbow and strap-on whathaveyous. It was here I began to notice how so many Australian men are shaped like Bluto from the Popeye comic strip. Men in Sydney are a tough lot, and I have seen more men with black eyes here than I've seen anywhere in years.

Which brings us to Manly Beach. Yes, that's the name of the place. My photos from our day there are proof that this joke never gets old. There is a Manly Yacht Club, a Manly Children's Hospital, and a Manly Lifesaving Club which is a members only association of lifeguards. The beaches around Sydney are perfect. In addition to Manly, we also biked over to Bondi Beach. When I mentioned how pleasant it was that nobody was blasting reggaeton or Foghat through cheap speakers, Hilary thankfully pointed out the dearth of men in Speedos. Best of all, there was nobody was attempting the swim-&-smoke, one of my least favorite human activities to witness.

The ferry ride back from Manly across Sydney Harbor at sunset was worth the twenty-three hour flight. Nothing can prepare you for the Sydney Opera House. You just have to come and see it for yourself.

I'll leave you with this: there are bats in Sydney's otherwise beautiful Hyde Park the size of German Shepherd puppies. How it is that the entire city has not relocated I have no idea. The most discomforting moment I have had here was watching the bats fly en masse from the cathedral towers at dusk and circle above the trees in Hyde Park, clicking and swooping the way giant bats apparently do. Where I come from a bat fits easily inside your hand, the way it should be, not that you would ever touch one. These Aussie bats are snatch-your-baby-from-the-pram Nightbirds from Hell and I want no part of it.

Tomorrow morning we have a morning flight to Uluru, the giant red rock in the middle of this vast, dry continent.

Letter from Barrow, Alaska

People keep asking me how cold it is, so here's the deal: temperatures fluctuate. I just looked and supposedly right now it is eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit, with a low of around fifteen below expected later tonight. Those numbers don't take windchill into account, and it's always windy here since the nearest hill or tree is more than three hundred miles to the south and it's a straight shot up and over the Arctic Ocean to the North Pole.

One local said the other day, and with a straight face, "we're lucky we have the Arctic Ocean right here. It keeps us warm." I know what he means, but come on. While temperatures here are slightly higher on average than in the vast interior of Alaska, as far as I can tell, "warm" is not part of the equation.

If you dress properly for extreme cold weather, temperatures below negative thirty degrees Fahrenheit are actually quite tolerable, though one area you've got to be extra careful about is your face. Don't leave any of that tender facial skin exposed. Your face will tell you pretty quickly that it's unhappy--I believe the word for this is "pain".

Just before I left New York for Barrow, my father wrote me with this bit of, um, advice: Kit, Just read a brief review of Ian McEwan's latest book, Solar, a satirical novel focusing on global warming. He apparently went where you're going and an anecdote drifted in from the review about the Arctic danger of having your penis freeze to your fly zipper! By the way, the remedy was to pour brandy over it. (Sorry waste of good brandy, but...there you are.) Hope things go well with you, Luv, D.
The most time I have spent outdoors in a given stretch is about one hour, and that was only once. When we start shooting, about three weeks from now, I will be outside for ten or twelve hours at a time. I am not dreading it, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about it an awful lot.

I mail ordered a polyurethane hood and some goggles on my second day here. They should arrive by the end of next week.

Today I walked about a quarter mile out onto the frozen Arctic Ocean and when I got back to town the local producer warned me that I should never do that without a gun. "Because of the polar bears," she said. All I could think of to say was "but I don't have a gun," followed by my sheepish pledge, "I promise not to be eaten by a polar bear."

A rudimentary Internet search will give you a more accurate picture of the people, culture, and climate here than I am able to after only four days, but here are some factoids and chewy bits you might enjoy:

• The North Slope Borough of Alaska, of which Barrow is the borough seat, is the largest county-level municipality in the United States, and maybe even the world, covering an area roughly the size of Utah.
• Each building in Barrow has a unique number for an address, so you don't even have to include the name of the street in your mailed correspondence. Brilliant!
  
• Barrow has more than four thousand residents, and most of them tend to stay indoors. I've been here almost a week now, staying in one of the four small hotels on the "center" of town. During my walks at various times of day I've seen about fifteen other human beings.
  
• Try and wrap your head around this: the North Slope of Alaska is both a desert and a wetlands. Here's how: the amount of overall precipitation is low enough to classify the region as a desert, while the permafrost (ground that never thaws) prevents drainage after what little snow there is finally melts, so as to make it a wetlands.
• Barrow is a "damp" town, but not a "dry" town. In a damp town, an individual Alaska resident may procure a license to purchase alcoholic beverages from an out of town vendor. The sale of alcoholic beverages in Barrow is prohibited. In many neighboring "dry" communities, it is illegal to import or possess alcohol. Both native and non-native locals are quite frank about why this control is needed. As one guy put it to me rather bluntly, "Alcohol makes Indians crazy."
  

The movie I am working on is called On the Ice. The short film version, "Sikumi", won the Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at Sundance in 2008. The writer-director, Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, has developed his short into a feature film, which tells a similar story about morality and freedom and choice, but includes more characters, and basically incorporates the entire town. About half the movie will be shot "on the ice" and the other half in the town of Barrow.

Here is a link to the short film.

The highlights so far were an after midnight road trip up to Point Barrow to look at the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights), and spending much of an evening watching a group of a dozen local women sew the hides of several seals together to make the outer hull of a boat. When they finished sewing around ten-thirty at night, the men came by and stretched the newly sewn hides over the twelve-foot wooden frame of the whale boat. As soon as the Arctic ice melts, several whalers will hunt from this tiny vessel.

(And,

two months later...)

We wrapped last Friday after the most exhausting month of shooting I've ever experienced. About half the movie was shot out on the frozen Arctic Ocean. On those "ice days" we traveled to set each day on snowmobiles which in turn towed sleds with equipment and our rather banged up looking crew. The commute alone took hours sometimes: packing, loading, traveling over land, unloading, unpacking, setting up. Repeat at end of day. Snowmobiles break down a lot, and wooden sleds get all banged up after hours of travel over chunky ice formations. Our unit took a real beating on an hourly basis, but we shot everything we wanted to--or just about.

By the time we wrapped the movie, the sun was in the sky more than twenty-one hours a day. Over the final two weeks the darkest it ever got was what I would call broad daylight on a cloudy day.

Every minute during the prepping and shooting of a film is important. Hypersensitivity to time is a fundamental part of filmmaking. The locals in Barrow actually have a word for our southern ways; without a hint of irony, they call it "on-time culture".

Climate change is occurring, and not just according to this recent New York Times design piece. The locals here talk about the new calendar of seasons, and claim to have been talking about it for some time. It's affecting our shoot. The ice "looks like June", not March. Saint Patrick's Day is the new Memorial Day. The caribou run a month later in the fall now. A couple years ago a whole bunch of whalers floated away on some ice that broke off. The ice breaks off a lot closer to shore these days.

There's a website which details Aurora Borealis activity. Our chef couldn't get enough of these nights out observing and photographing--until the around-the-clock daylight made it impossible, he was out there just about every other night with his lenses and tripod taking amazing photographs.

Save for a fair amount of hydroponic marijuana production, there is no agriculture in Barrow, no matter what the season.

I have eaten the meat, blubber, and skin of whale, caribou stew, and elk--I think it was elk. Just about everything is expensive here, food most of all. A guy across the hall from me in the Top of the World Hotel ordered Chinese takeout for himself the other night and he was just as shocked as I was when the total for his dinner came to a fair seventy-seven bucks.

There are several restaurants in town, which run the gamut from inedible to way too expensive. There are two pizza places--both deliver, but only one has tables. And there's a Mexican joint, a local cafe, and even sushi. Three of us went for coffee the other day. Total cost of three delicious beverages: $17. (Full disclosure: we didn't have any cash on us, but the owner knew we were part of the film crew and agreed to let us come back and pay later.)

I saw whales in water, I saw whales out of the water. I saw whales butchered and ate their meat, blubber, and skin. Maktak has a fishy smell that is like a fishy smell on steroids.

All of the homes and businesses I have been in here are heated to the point of being way too hot. Since the windows and doors are not drafty, people tend to wear t-shirts and shorts inside their hot homes in which they burn gas, oil, or kerosene.

I was surprised to find out that people don't have woodstoves or fireplaces here until I looked around and reminded myself that there are no trees for hundreds of miles. There is one, literally, one, guy in town who goes to great expense to barge in firewood from Seattle once a year. He's known as "woodstove guy" and locals consider it a privilege to live in his neighborhood where you can smell the smoke.

The high school is the most expensive in the nation; eighty million dollars to ship materials & build it.

Lots of people have kids here, and in turn a lot of the kids have kids. One twenty-three year-old woman involved with our production is about to have her third child. I have met several teenage parents here.

On the plane from Anchorage to Fairbanks, I sat between a weapons manufacturer and a methamphetamine addict. Meth is a problem in Barrow, though like so much else in Barrow the side effects stay indoors most of the time. I remember witnessing the effects of alcoholism during two months I spent lower Alaska twenty years ago. The state newspapers refer to some of these folks as "chronic inebriates".

It pays to be a Native Alaskan. Indians in the lower forty-eight chose land over resources (we all know how that worked out), but the Alaskans chose to keep control over natural resources. As a result there is a Fortune 500 corporation from which every Eskimo receives a hefty annual stipend.

Postcard from Everywhere

Yesterday I visited Wales, a country I claim as one of my three ancestral homes, and the twelfth country I have seen in the past eleven months. In just a couple of days I return to the United States of America, where my first film assignment on home turf will be in Barrow, Alaska (a mere seven-hundred-fifty miles north of Anchorage).

Since we last spoke, let me assure you, I have been everywhere. I am in possession of such a backlog of thoughts, notes, photographs, videos, musings, and ramblings, that I can't begin to fit them all into one letter. If you actually want to hear about it, you'll have to wait for my book to be published.
I finally did procure a camera, and by legal means I'll have you know. My journeys across Morocco, and in Spain, France, and the UK have all been documented in pictures. The camera is one of the reasons I am currently unable to organize my thoughts in words. I seem to think in images for the time being. I am bringing the camera to Alaska, where it will no doubt freeze and stop working and I will go back to being a writer.

I'm pleased to report that my seven weeks at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo didn't make me entirely soft. In subsequent travels I have happily shared bunk rooms with strangers, some even more fragrant than me. The cost of the rooms I stayed at in Morocco averaged about sixteen bucks per night. At those prices, I learned not to expect towels, a telephone, breakfast, a TV, or toilet paper.

When I crossed the Straits of Gibraltar from North Africa into Spain by ferry boat, I fulfilled a nearly lifelong desire--the desire not to capsize and die while crossing the Straits of Gibraltar by ferry boat.


Apropos of not much, the director of photography on my Egypt gig, a gregarious Aussie (is there any other kind?), insists that there must exist a connection between a country's GDP and its practice of painting its tree trunks white. He might be on to something. I first noticed this practice in Venezuela, and then later throughout the Mideast. But in Morocco, the tree painters took it one step further, and had actually stripped most of the bark from the lowermost portion of the trees before painting the trunks white. There are long stretches of roadside woods made up of trees with no bark left on the lower part of the trunks, which were then painted white. I have yet to see anything like this in Europe or the UK.

Hey: if you have the means and the wherewithal, I urge you to get out there and see the world. See as much as you can before it all looks the same. The sameness is encroaching everywhere.

See you soon, I hope.

Insha'Allah.

Kit












--
In Memory of Ann Purcell (1917-2010)

Marrakesh, Morrocoo, at Dusk, by Bike

I took this video in Marrakesh, Morrocco.

Letter to Egypt [Vol. 2]

[So this is not actually Volume 2, as I have not written a letter to Egypt yet. But you get the idea.]

Dear Egypt,

Please clean up your act. There are thirty million inhabitants in Cairo but you will not pay anybody to sweep the sidewalks or collect household trash, leaving your citizens no choice but to toss their trash in the seemingly endless irrigation ditches stemming from the Nile--the same channels in which people catch fish to feed their families. Your children bathe in this same water, full of garbage and human waste.

Have you noticed that of the many tourists who come here to visit, very few return for a second trip? This is because you hassle them, hustle them, rip them off, harangue them, and then lie that it ever happened like that. If I had been here on a two week vacation, I would have left after one week. You beg for things you don't necessarily need.

Have you no pride (or shame) in the food you grow, sell, or serve? Vegetables and fruit are served in a condition just short of rotten. A five dollar lemonade, listed as "fresh" on your menus, is nothing but powdered Country Time. Nescafe is your coffee beverage of choice. My friend ordered a milkshake the other day at lunch, and we will never understand how you could have possibly intended to serve it hot.

Where are you hiding the women? They don't wait or bus tables in your restaurants, or work in your hotels, or drive your buses and taxis. They aren't smoking shisha in your cafes or working in your shops. They don't pilot your river boats or sell wares on the street. What are they doing and where are they doing it?

What's with all the yelling? Can you not learn to communicate in softer tones? Every interaction need not be an argument or a chance to display your bravado.

Your infinite archaeological and historical attractions in and around Cairo, Luxor, and elsewhere are spectacular and well worth a trip here--something to be proud of indeed. Yet graft and mismanagement of these sites leaves visitors with more than just the taste of sand in their mouths.

I do not want a camel ride. I do not want a book of postcards. Thank you, I like my shirt too. I like Obama too, thank you. Really, thanks a lot. No, I do not want to buy a hat, sunglasses, or a scarf. No, I just told you I do not want a camel ride. No, not a donkey ride either. Or a horse, thank you. I refuse to be mocked for not riding your camel.

Keep honking your car horns, but please realize that nobody's listening. Sure, we all hear it, but the other drivers simply are not paying attention. May I suggest an alternative? Traffic lanes. (You know me, always thinking outside the box.) I have another suggestion: turn on your headlights after dark. Not only will it help you see the road, but it will help others see you as well.

I will be leaving Egypt in a few weeks. I hope you and I can learn to see eye to eye before then. If not, after I have gone, please keep me posted as to how things improve.

Best,

Kit

Letter from Egypt

And Now... Egypt.
After taking December off to travel in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan (where I floated in the saline waters of the Dead Sea, and hiked the far reaches within the ancient city of Petra), I flew from Beirut to Cairo on the second to last day of 2009 to begin a new job on a TV show about (what else?) Egyptology.

No amount of Middle East sightseeing and adventure could have prepared me for the experiences I am having in Egypt. I consider myself very fortunate to have the opportunity to explore Egypt for such a substantial length of time--it's a seven week shoot--all the while earning a paycheck.

On my first day in Egypt I tech-scouted the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx--I will be back there several days in the coming weeks to shoot. My second day had me riding atop a 4x4 shooting B-roll in the vast desert surrounding the Pyramids at Dahshur. And while my work has left me little time to explore Cairo itself, the largest city in North Africa, seeing the archaeological sites in which I spend my days have already made this trip worth a hundred vacations.

Because there are too many to properly manage and manage, the majority of archaeological sites in Egypt are closed to the public. But because we are working for the History Channel (a media entity known to drum up tourism) and because the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, is the subject of our show, our production has been granted access to certain tombs, pyramids, and temples most people have not been able to visit for years. We even covered a bona fide discovery this week, one the Council is calling "the best find in years"--and the kind of thing archaeologists drool over.

In addition to shooting in and around Cairo and Giza, our crew will head south to Luxor for a week and north to Alexandria for a quick shoot there. This month I will have the once in a lifetime experience of being four hundred feet beneath the surface of the Earth when we shoot a scene inside a tomb at the Valley of Kings.

It's A Desert Because... It's A Desert
On a good physical map Egypt looks like a beige rhombus with a vertical green line drawn down the right side of it. Inside that green line is an even narrower blue line--that would be the Nile. You've probably heard of it. The rest of Egypt, I can report, is sand broken up by a few oases here and there. It's hot, then it's cold, but mostly it's dry.

Cairo is Huge
Cairo is the first place I have seen homeless people since being in the Middle East. I can only assume they are homeless because they are sleeping on subway grates. The transition to a major city in a new-to-me part of the world was made much easier by my having spent so much time in the region already. If Beirut was like Albuquerque, Damascus like Chicago, and Jordan like Ohio: then Cairo is a dirty Los Angeles. It's vast, crowded, noisy, diverse, and difficult to navigate. The traffic is insane beyond belief. The smog is thick as mud, the buildings are dusty. Sadly, it's tough to find good food here (especially coming from Lebanon and Syria where one must search out a meal that's less than perfect). So far, I have not seen anything I would describe as "quaint" in Egypt.

For anyone planning a trip to the Middle East, I would suggest Egypt for the archaeological wonders, Syria for exotic and exciting Arabic culture, Jordan for rest, relaxation, and sightseeing, and Lebanon for partying like a rockstar, and eating delicious food--though you can hike and ski there too.

Am I Going to Hell?
My job has me holed up in the Four Seasons Hotel, overlooking the Nile on one side and the Great Pyramids of Giza on the other. Wouldn't it be my luck to get stuck with the Pyramid side? Several evenings I have watched the sun go down behind the Great Pyramids of Giza as I kicked back on my private balcony strumming the El Cheapo guitar I purchased months ago in Lebanon.

I am shocked I actually have it in me to complain about the service at the Four Seasons. The main problem is that it's too good. The staff have no qualms about touching my razor and toothbrush, and they continue to fold my dirty laundry even after I have asked them to stop because that confuses me. There are too many options to choose from at breakfast. The workers don't leave me alone and they are far too pleasant. People actually come by at night to save me the trouble of turning down the blankets on my bed, and aligning up my complimentary slippers for easy entry. When I call down to ask for a wake up call, the scripted response is "with pleasure, Mr. Bland," to which the only reply I can think of is "Pleasure? Really?"

So, yes, hello, it's me, a fat North American sitting pretty on the African continent, complaining about the all too eager service in my luxury hotel while miles away entire families subside on whatever piastres they can gather transporting their crops to market by ox or donkey, or raising a few goats for slaughter.

Letter From Syria, Vol. 2

I must be in Syria again: It took six hours for two Americans to be issued a visa at the border. The highways and roads are in very good condition. There are no Starbucks, Burger Kings, or Kinko's. My U.S. bank will not allow me to use the ATM at the "Syria International Islamic Bank," access my account online, or transact in any way. The vast majority of the police force (in a country where fifty percent of the population works for the government) is undercover. Most businesses have young apprentices working in them, and it sometimes feels as if the country is run by twelve year old boys--but not girls. In addition to the myriad spices, candies, nuts, teas, coffees, soaps, clothes, and handmade items, a shopper with a keen eye for deals in the souks can find a Santa Claus bustier, an armoire inlaid with genuine camel bone, and pickled pigs' feet by the gallon. There are almost no American tourists, and only a handful of Europeans and Asians. Multiple photographic reproductions of a man looking like a darker haired Larry Bird are on display everywhere--oh wait, that's actually Bashar al-Assad, president of the Syrian Arab Republic, and son of Hafez al-Assad, the former president. (Okay, fine, here is the official government photo of the Syrian president. Nearly two weeks in Syria has permanently seared the man's face onto my visual cortex.) It is impossible to be served a bad meal--except in Palmyra, an archaeological wonderland, but a tourist trap of the worst degree. The typical restaurant has thirty-five to fifty employees on duty per shift. A delicious, leisurely dinner for two could cost $15, a hotel room $22, a rental car $35 a day, and a handmade Persian rug $1,000. The Middle Eastern pop music blaring from car stereos is just as bad as the pop music at home, but the classic Umm Koulthoum and Fairuz recordings are wonderful anywhere, anytime. The most commonly heard English word is "welcome." People on the street loathe George W. Bush, and want to talk about it. They love Barack Obama, and want to talk about it. Nobody bothers to read the [government owned and operated] newspaper. Signs on the highway point toward Baghdad. The 19th century architecture reflects an air of modernity. Local lore has it that the landing pad for the second coming of Christ is right over there atop the Umayyad Mosque, and some say John the Baptist's head is buried over there under that wall. Low key, easy to miss historical plaques tell of events which took place before Islam or Christianity existed. When I nod my head "yes" people assume I am saying "no." The fruit is abundant, fresh, and complimentary after most meals out, and the coffee is thick as mud.

Yes, I must be in Syria again.

Syrian Photo Journal

Here is the link to our Syrian photo journal. Most of the pictures were taken by Matt.

(K*d@k requires that you sign in with an email address, but you can easily opt out of their mailings with a simple X in the box.)

Letter From Syria

December 16, 2009

I returned to Lebanon on Sunday after more than a week of traveling in Syria. Next to Cuba, Syria is probably the country most misunderstood by Americans--though I hasten to add that Syria is not next to Cuba, nor anywhere near it.

I went to Syria with Matt, my good friend since middle school, who is now in many ways partly British, having lived in London more than a third of his life. Matt came to meet me in Lebanon after we wrapped production in early December. I was actually in Jordan the day he arrived, and then I slept most of the first forty-eight hours we were together in the Middle East. Such a host!

The geographical area of Syria is approximately fifteen times the size of Lebanon (which, as you will remember from an earlier report, is half the size of New Hampshire--itself being roughly twenty times the size of the five boroughs of New York City). Are we all clear on the size of Syria now? Please note: I may have most of my numbers wrong.

Let me be clear about one thing: there is enough hospitality, kindness, and good will in Syria to fill an entire continent many times over. The hardest time my travel companion and I had was getting across the border into Syria in the first place. The entire process took six hours, not including travel time--but delay is to be expected entering a country the United States government has officially considered a "rogue state" since 1979.

So many Syrians we met along the way took us in and offered us whatever they could: tea, cigarettes, food, lodging, travel pointers, and backgammon tips. (We did not realize there are several ways to play backgammon. Apparently, Westerners play "the boring way".) At each stop, our hosts would be curious why two Americans chose to come to Syria. The truth was that there was nowhere else to go from Lebanon.

Damascus
Damascus is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. I lifted that phrase right off Wikipedia, so it must be true, though I think they may have taken it from the Lonely Planet guide. Aleppo, in the north of the country, vies for the title as well. Plagiarism and contests aside, Damascus is a bustling old world city, with vast and significant religious and cultural history that one can feel as well as see. In a country crammed with ruins and thousands of archaeological sites, Damascus offers travelers a different experience, as one actually witnesses the current incarnation of the place as well as sees its artifacts.

The basement chapel where the apostle Paul, né Saul, first preached the gospel still exists in the Old City there. Paul claimed to have been struck blind by a vision of Jesus while en route to Damascus, where he intended to punish Christians. An early Christian dude named Ananais helped Paul recover and then helped him set up shop in his basement. The tiny hidden chapel reminds me of the Cavern Club, where the Beatles played those early gigs in Liverpool.

The Umayyad Mosque claims the status as the oldest location in which Muslims have continuously prayed. I can't tell you how many times I wrote that last sentence before it made sense; seriously, it was more than a twenty times. There are traces of civilization in Damascus and the surrounding area dating back, by some accounts, as far as 9000 B.C.E. For you historians, that's a very long time ago.

There is a small Jewish Quarter in Damascus as well, but you wouldn't know it when you're there. It's not exactly South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The Souks
The rambling pedestrian marketplaces in Damascus, called souks, extend in a spaghetti maze within the walls of the Old City for miles. When you take into account the side streets and alleyways, the opportunities for commerce seem to go on indefinitely.

The question what is for sale in the souk? is actually easier to answer in the inverse: what is not for sale in the souk?, the answer to which seems limited to the following items:

• Stocks & bonds
• Automobiles
• Farm equipment
• Pornography
  
• Drugs & (with a few exceptions) alcohol
  
• Newspapers
• Yachts
  
• Land (as far as I could tell)
  

Any item not on that list could be found in a souk. I dare you to challenge me on this. The well known specialty items are the aged olive oil soap, silk scarves and linens. There is also an abundance of all clothing, socks by the dozen, jackets, hats, candies, nuts, coffee, tea, beeswax, handcrafted wooden boxes, swords, knives, antiques, cutlery, furniture, rugs, blankets, luggage, toys, paintings, cheese, fruit smoothies, shawerma sandwiches, falafel, yummy pancakes, fine dining opportunities, pearl-inlaid backgammon boards and chess sets, and underwear. There are several stores that only sell candy-covered peanuts.

Aleppo
On our first night in Aleppo, a northern city as large as Damascus, Matt and I had the misfortune of getting lost while attempting to take our tiny rental car the mere one hundred yards from our own one-star hotel into the basement parking garage of a luxury hotel down the street. I was at the wheel. One wrong turn brought us inside the Aleppo souk, which is at times barely six-feet wide, and we couldn't find our way out. I felt I was trapped in the Middle Eastern version of that 1960s folk song about "Charlie & the MTA" by the Kingston Trio. It took us the better part of forty-five minutes, sometimes driving in reverse, of barreling down those dark and narrow alleyways, past vendors, donkey carts, shoppers and, surely, disapproving secret policemen, until we popped back out onto an actual street. We were laughing harder than what you might think is appropriate given the situation, and we must have looked like idiotic American tourists.

The parking garage ended up costing more than our hotel.

Syria Feels Safe
For tourists, Syria is one of the safest place to travel. It seems unthinkable that a crime would be committed anywhere on the streets of Syria. The sad reality is that Syria is a police state, yet we saw no (uniformed) police presence anywhere, save for the traffic cops here and there. Statistics state that fifty percent of the Syrian populace works for the government in some way, and the vast majority much of the police force is undercover. The hotel where we stayed in Aleppo (just south of the Turkish border) was also the headquarters of the so called "Tourism Police" and we saw middle aged men in plainclothes come in and out all day and night. No evidence of crime can be seen anywhere.

Old Country For No Women
In a decidedly male dominated region, Syria is a decidedly male dominated society. Women out and about during the day, but the overwhelming majority of businesses are operated by men.

Syria has a very active nightlife. While it is mostly men eating and hanging out in the restaurants late at night, there are some families here and there. Most shopping in the souks closes down by seven or eight o'clock, but the restaurants are packed until one or two in the morning. There's no New Orleans style rowdiness at all in Syria. The Muslim population--ninety-percent and growing--tend not to drink, and indeed most establishments don't serve alcohol. You see a lot of card playing and backgammon, sitting around chatting, and smoking tobacco in a nargileh--also known as shisha, hookah, or "hubbly bubbly".

Syria is the First World
Coming into Syria from Lebanon is an enlightening experience. In so many ways, Lebanon--open to Western influence and commercialism--remains a developing country. This has a lot to do with the economic hardships created by long stretches of war. Syria, however, compared to its tiny neighbor the west, really seems to have its act together. There are trains and buses and the traffic flows according to a plan. People stop at traffic lights. Beirut doesn't think twice about putting up a luxury hotel with a Dolce & Gabbana store inside the lobby, but they neglect to replace the torn up sidewalk in front of it. In Damascus, the sidewalks are in good repair, and people use them.

Bedouin Culture: Welcome!
The Bedouins are the most hospitable people I have ever known, with Appalachian porch dwellers coming in at a close second. Inside the ancient ruins of Palmyra--an area that extends for miles allowing a visitor to roam freely through the temples and along the colonnade--we were invited in by a family of Bedouins: Khalid and his wife (whose name I found unpronounceable) and their two young daughters, both toddlers, Cedra and Nour, who are so different from one another but both lively and adorable. The four of them live inside a small complex of three tents, the largest of which is about fifteen by eight feet. Khalid's wife is pregnant with their third child.

Matt took photos and video of the six of us sitting inside the tent, drinking tea, smoking Khalid's knock-off Marlboros and playing silly-face with the girls. Neither Matt nor I speak Arabic, and Khalid's three words of English ("one", "two", and "welcome"--by far the most used English word in the Middle East) weren't enough to make up for own ignorance, but we happily spent more than hour with them, laughing, and playing, and "talking". We took turns pointing to phrases in Khalid's dog-eared English-Arabic phrase book to communicate such ideas as "it is still raining", "we are friends" and "Italy is nice." I gave Khalid my sunglasses as a thank you gift, in anticipation of the rainy season someday coming to an end.

When we finally went outside at sunset, there was still a light rain, and as we walked away we saw a rainbow high in the sky which seemed to end right at the entrance to their tent.