From Tripoli to Tyre

I now live at http://www.livingoutsidetime.blogspot.com/ It started as a blog about my new life in Kuwait but has now morphed and diverged in a random way.

Anyway, back to Lebanon.

I stayed on in the historical area of Baalbek til dusk. I ran into Joshua, who I’d first met on the road to Ephesus and then later in Pammakale. He sat opposite me creatively drawing while I wrote. Perching serenely over his notepad, he looked up enquringly and said 'isn’t that the sound of gunfire?' Joshua is lithe and chilled, benignly reptilian in his calm charisma. I always felt we had some unspoken connection, even though we had little to say to each other. Certainly, our habit of bumping into each other was uncanny. We’d meet again in three weeks time in Jerusalem, which surprised neither of us.

Ian and I separated in Baalbek, supposedly for 24 hours. According to our plans, I’d travel over the hills to Tripoli where he’d join me from Beirut, to which he'd now returned, not fancying Baalbek’s Ramamdan tranquility.

No taxis or buses could take me to Tripoli so I had to go via Beirut. Since Lebanon is tiny, this didn’t matter. From Beirut you can go anywhere easily on day trips. Tripoli is a crowded Sunni city, 2km in land from the coast beneath a crusader castle set above a river.

Ian never turned up. He’d decided to take off for Jordan. But I decided to stay the night in Al Mina, a nearby modern town on the coast. There’s a curious sculpture on the coast built out of computers.

Pictures of Hariri are everywhere. I had an interesting chat with a man who invited me for a coffee on the street outside his café. When I showed him my Syrian coins he threw them back at me in unambiguous disgust. This deflated my instinct to talk politics.

Back in Beirut I saw the hard drinking Sean, an Irishman I’d met him earlier over breakfast in the little cafe in Gemayzih. He spoke very fast in a high pitched squeal I couldn’t always follow. He used to study politics in Beirut and was dropping by on holiday. He told me Irish unity was in the post, a question of demographics, Catholics in the north outbreeding the Protestants. He wore a conspiratorial aura which led me to imagine he might enjoy the darker side of political intrigue. He told me he’d met Nasrallah, that he was 'a great guy' and that whoever killed Hariri. it was not the Syrians.

In Sidon I met a Palestinian, someone lucky enough not to live in a refugee camp. Most of them have to, alas.

Later in a café the waiter asked me what I felt the difference was between Lebanon and Syria. I said there’s less social cohesion in Lebanon, that it’s more political, more westernized and less friendly.

In Tyre, Jezebel’s home, I went swimming for the first time since Hasankeyf, though for this I needed to borrow a bar attendant’s (clean) swimming trunks. Across the sea I could see Israel, the unmentionable land. Smoke rose from fires across the sea. I wondered what would happen, had I been a better swimmer, if I decided to swim to the Israeli coast. Who would intercept me? Would a soggy passport do me any favours?

The ruins in Tyre are unspoilt and, so it appeared, entirely unvisited. To get to the main section I was kindly escorted by some Palestinians through their house and out through their back garden past Yassar Arafat posters and Maps of Palestine with pre-1948 village names.

Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley

After 3 days in Beirut, living amidst the glossy westernization, the soldiers and the hills, Ian and I left our bags at Hostel Talal and took a bus to Baalbek. The journey east took us past the bridge the Israelis bombed last summer, though the damage didn’t seem that severe. Either that or repair work has been rapid. Nobody I talked to in Lebanon, as opposed to in Syria, seemed especially outspoken in their hatred of Israel. Despite that, one could sense a clear anti-Israeli conviction simmering away, not without reason or justification of course. But perhaps the Lebanese, in all their various groupings, are prioritising above Israel the opposition they face in their particular ways from whatever group of Lebanese society they happen to be at odds with. Such an internal divisiveness is absent in Syria. Or rather, in so far as it exists there, it’s resolutely hidden and repressed. Perhaps needs for external enemies, I am wondering, may increase the more you can’t find or identify a scapegoat at home.

Baalbek is in the Bekaa valley, the sort of place you’re not supposed to visit if you’re accustomed to following the travel advice of your embassy. Actually, the website of the British Foreign Office said all inessential travel to Lebanon should not be undertaken. Still, foreign offices are notoriously conservative and risk-averse. I suppose this is a reasonable position if the majority of the people they represent are timid and uncourageous in their travel plans, which seems to be the case with most travellers as far as I can see.

Speaking for myself, I was aware of the risks, but they seemed too minimal to justify my hiding away. The recent attacks and violence in Lebanon were highly targeted, strategically focused affairs; and always inflicted upon other Lebanese people, not foreigners. Similarly, what did the violence recently ended at the Palestinian refugee camp and waged against the Lebanese army, have to do with me? In general, the only viable Islamic threat to my life that I can accept is from Al-Qaeda-style Islamo-nuts who want me dead because of my pearly white skin and Christian, Western predilections. Although I couldn’t be sure, I was confident that just as in Syria this element was in a considerable minority in Lebanon and so posed little more of a threat to me than in the UK. Regarding Baalbek in particular, given that Al-Qaeda style terrorists are predominantly Sunni, I felt the threat would be even lower than elsewhere since the Bekaa is a Shiite area. As such, in so far as it boasts terrorists at all (presumably terrorists are proud of being terrorists?), it is populated by a different breed, Shia Hezbollah terrorists, whose beef seems more exclusively to be with Jews and with Israelis (is there a difference, they may say?), of which I am neither.

On this interesting question of ‘Are Terrorists proud to be terrorists’, I received a fairly unequivocable answer from the chest of a yellow Hezbollah T-Shirt a shop owner pleaded with me to buy. He pleaded because the events subsequent to Hariri’s assassination, as well as last year’s war, have devastated tourism in the area. What it displayed was an arm holding a rifle aloft. Personally I found this image distasteful; and I felt this for reasons that had nothing to do with whether or not Hezbollah’s cause is just. Even if it is, and utterly just, I’d still hate to wear such a T-shirt, nor feel particularly at ease drinking coffee with anyone who was. Ok, for sure, no doubt Hezbollah will claim not to be terrorists but freedom fighters. But what difference does that make? Why valorize violence? Why not look upon it instead, if it is a necessity (I’m not saying it is), as an evil and shameful necessity which one wants to think about as little as possible? Naturally, this observation can apply for all glorifiers of murder and killing at all and any level, Governmental or non-Governmental, ‘legitimate’ or illegitimate.

That said, the people in Baalbek were friendlier than in Beirut. In no sense did I feel in any danger whatsoever. They were also more religious and quieter. The mainstream tourist reason to visit Baalbek is to see the ruins. I have waxed effusive about Ephesus before, and said that it was wonderful. But Baalbek was better. Hanging out there for two hours was a real highlight, not only of Lebanon but of my trip overall. Especially captivating is the Temple of Bacchus, the God of wine who in his better moments knows how to have a good time with the bottle. Inside I found a group of female American travelers of the New Agey, Paganesque, earth-worshipping kind. I sat down in front of the main altar next to one and when I did she took my hand. She looked over and smiled saying “Isn’t the energy amazing, can’t you feel it?” I was torn between being polite enough not to say “ No. of course not, but you are embarrassing me, which is making me quiver with a kind of energy” and actually wondering whether there was indeed an especially lively emanatory ambience circulating within the Temple. I am agnostic and also indifferent towards the question of natural ‘earth’ energies, so have no need to refute these claims. Why shouldn’t the earth be a living organism, and why shouldn’t this energy collect at specific places more than at others.

On this topic I remember my chat with Dunja, my marvellous German friend, one of my former fruitless focuses-of-desire from my Durham student days. She told me that, apparently, Britain has three sites that are particularly bursting with natural pagan light or energy or whatever you want to call it. I am lucky enough to have been to all of them. I can attest that in each I had some particularly acute moments of consciousness, of a nature I’d call transcendent (yes I cannot prove this, blah, blah, blah). These places are Glastonbury, a place now famous for mindless revelry of an entirely conformist, corporate nature, but which is apparently the site of the earliest Christian Church, and a place visited by the young Jesus; Iona, a small island off the coat of West Scotland next to the island of Mull; and Durham, the City of Splendour on the Weir, host of my seven year long studious sojourn.

I should have asked my American hand-holding friend if she had been to these places. By her own account she spends her time rooting out such venues.

By this stage I was getting to know Ian pretty well as he was opening up about the issues in his life. As usual, the fact that he was an effective atheist (or agnostic) didn’t bother me at all. Having spent my life amongst the mystically uninterested I’ve got used to the empirical consensus as it frames the potentiality of discourse. Meanwhile, on the other hand, as is also often the case, as an atheist (or agnostic) he exhibited certain human attributes of kindness, authenticity and honesty that I find all-too-often lacking amongst the community of the faithful. Why this should be the case is a very interesting question; I’m sure 9/10th of it has to do with the fact that religious people are not encouraged enough to have a fearless sense of self. Therefore, they won’t that readily open their minds to certain possibilites. While atheists or the agnostic, without a fearful God over and above them, can perhaps feel lees of a boundary of prohibition encircling the vaults of their consciousnesses, and so can the more easily feel the freedom to let it all hang out. Of course, there will always be exceptions to this, since atheist parents might be as cruelly oppressive as any theist ones, and nothing in religion, in Christianity anyway, necessarily decrees that one must be frightened of God. Well, at least not in my Christianity (what a lovely get out clause that is).

Ian

I spent my 36th birthday in a Beirut bar with Ian. This was a sober change from last year’s drunken experience in Shanti’s marvellously friendly International Bar in Fukuoka, Japan; although it was still appropriately inebriating. It had taken us ages to find a place to drink, weirdly enough since there are so many bars in Beirut. I fully appreciated the copious quantities of nuts and titbits adorning our table. Ian for his part expertly played the role of egging on the birthday boy to drink an above average quantity, while I was glad not to be alone on this ‘special’ day of the year when we are supposed to feel happy about getting older.

Ian had been travelling with an Aussie guy in Syria for a while and had seen pretty much the same places as I. We seemed through whatever process that brings travellers together to have decided to hang out with each other for a while. Certainly, from my side, finding a travel companion was very welcome. I’d not had one on the trip so far, only having found company in very particular places and for short periods of time: Jody in Athens, Geoff and Barry in Albania, Jana in Skopje, Emily in Gallipoli and then Damascus, Carlos, Justine and Olivia in Hasankeyf, Alfredo in Aleppo, as well as various random local characters encountered along the way. All this talk I’d heard about people picking up proper companions for the road was beginning to sound like embarrassing baloney. Others can attract hangers on but obviously not I. So perhaps I was subtly sending out messages to the Universe to find me a certain someone, preferably female and gorgeous, or if not then at least intelligent, funny, with whom I could commune. Or more likely, especially if one is not given to the hypothesis of meaning and occult significance delineating the events in one's life, it was sheer accident that the universe dug Ian out from its infinite resources and plonked him beside me in Damascus bus station. It’s not often that with genuine conviction one is pleased with the manifestations the Universe presents one with, but in this case I can say that I was. Well done Universe……keep up the good work, ok?

Ours was not an erotic bond, it need not be stated but just was. Rather, it was essentially cerebral. Ian is very bright and likes thinking deeply; not a quality one often finds in people – here in this world of vicarious existence, where many are often very happy for other powerful, influential people to think and therefore live their lives for them. People such as those who work in the media, and the celebrity industry; people such as certain parents, teachers and priests, who dish up for the multitudes minds nailed down into ossified, fossilised forms; minds which then render it quite a painful process for independent thoughts to take flight and autonomous delight in; people such as politicians and academics who crucify our expressive mechanisms, our language, with various forms of sclerotic abuse, such as salesman-sloganeering or political correctness; people indeed such as salesmen and advertisers themselves, whose job it is to shamelessly manufacture previously non-existent desires in a career pitting them as far from the example of the Buddha as it is possible to get.

That said of course Ian is an Academic. Well, nobody’s perfect. And of course one must worship at Mammon’s throne somehow, or so it’s insisted. I’m pretty sure there are many worse ways of living out ones soul’s time on the blue planet than being a Sociology lecturer. Actually, Ian is trying to get me into academia. He says, with a great deal of justification it must be said that I should become an academic or at least do a Phd because I’m so often reading and thinking and wanting to engage in the depths. I tell him I may do this, that I’ll think about it. Am I being sincere? He tells me I lack confidence, that it's this which stays my enthusiasm. I don’t think he’s right. I think it’s mainly a money thing; doing a Phd is expensive. I don’t particularly want to be poorer than I have to be. Nor do I especially want to study ‘part time’ and hold down a job, though this does make study more feasible I realise. Also, if you’re not certain that you’re going to become a lecturer afterwards, serious questions have to be raised about the vocational wisdom of doing a Phd, I'd have thought. Then the question of what to do it in’. The desperate need for originality in a world already splintered into a mass mosaic of fragmented specializations leaves the soul panting for some kind of remedial holism, does it not? And what of readership? Who will read my Phd except those few other stranded souls equally lost on a nearby, equally remote island of whatever specialised archipelago we'll have chosen to inhabit.

You might very well at this point declaim: ‘But nobody reads your blog!’ And you may very well be right (though I do know a handful of people who do, though beyond that I don’t know). But the thing about my blog is that I write from my heart and soul in an idiom that makes me feel that when I write I haven’t put my existential reality into cold storage at the bottom of a cellar behind a thick iron door marked ‘Thou Shalt Not Be Thyself’. So I have an investment in writing my blog that pertains to the genuine meaning of ‘communication’ as a reality of inter-connection between two authentic beings; the reader who reads because he or she wants to, and not because of some secondary, pretended or ulterior purpose; and the writer who is giving of themselves in their act of writing. How much communication goes on exactly between the dusty pages of a Phd and the tired, dutiful eyes that read it I'm not entirely sure. You tell me.

Of course I realize what will be thought;...but Jonathan, you are not interesting. Except to yourself and perhaps those close to you such as family and friends, or perhaps some others you might possibly manage to beguile, you are not interesting. Nor do you matter. Like all individuals, wriggling around in their subjective psychodramas, it’s all been seen and it’s all been done before. There is nothing about you which in-itself is significantly different from and therefore remotely interesting to the world in general. The point and purpose of academia, indeed of all intellectuality, is not to navel gaze in a manner more sophisticated than the one one might pursue if one lacked the rational or expressive tools to be complicated, but to actually address and try to compass objectivity or, to put it bluntly, to engage with and confront that about the world which is not you….

A crushing retort to my narcissism I know…:)

But the thing is, I have no argument with this, that the focus of intellectuality should be on a content which is not private or merely personal. I have never denied this. Academia’s interest in the depersonalized is not what I object to; it is its manner of being so interested that worries me. By approaching objective topics in a style, in a way that is depersonalized we humans, we thinkers have basically abdicated our humanity, and devised for ourselves a world to discover that in-itself is therefore alienated from our actual experienced reality and drenched in the appearances of the strange, the mysterious, the inert and the oftentimes hostile.

That is my charge against the academic method, not at all that it doesn’t give me the platform to rant on about my personal dramas, dramas which I assure you often bore me as much as they would or already do you.

Anyway, that said, it still could be true that, as Ian said, in the academic milieu I could meet a lot of like-minded people. Its also true that I have very warm, nostalgic memories of my times in Durham. But then the questions of what subject and under whom I should study. And do I really want to get back into the minefields of academic theology again, after having almost fried my brain to a sinder during my MA. Maybe I've calmed down since then in crucial ways. Maybe we will see.

Lebanon's Choice

Ian, a man who likes walking more than I do, persuaded me to lug my overloaded bag the required 4 km to the hostel Talah, just north of Gemayzih, where we had decided to stay. Even more than out of the window as we drove over Lebanon’s greeniness, the higher levels of prosperity and westernization became apparent, signaling an end to my month long exile from western culture, which had begun in Kayseri east of Goreme.

This intimation reached a crescendo of homecoming when I spotted the Virgin Megastore dominating Martyr’s square. The plush, succulent bars of Gemayziz, as self-consciously hip and superior as it possible for a bar to get, further completed the scene; as did the prices which indicated that my Syrian days of spending less than ten pounds a day were definitively over.

I am struck by memories of the food., which was really excellent. Usually I’m pretty indifferent to food, except for two considerations – that it should be adequately cooked and that there should be enough of it on my plate. The food I’ve tended to enjoy most over the years has been fried and fatty and basically on the wrong side of good for me. But Lebanese food – which looks and tastes as healthy food is supposed to, really charmed me as no other cuisine has, during these recent months of travel at least; all the glowing reports are true.

Beirut is festooned with militias and private armies. As I write Lebanon stands on the brink of a meltdown into what might become a new civil war. That event, if it happens, will be a regrettable tragedy for which the various players involved - in all their variousness - will be to blame. One would be forgiven for addressing Lebanon thus: If you value war over peace, do not be surprised, nay, be grateful, if war is what you get. On the other hand, If you value peace over war, as you say you do, then act accordingly and stop boring the world’s media to death with your indigestible quagmire.

After choosing your paradigm by which to understand the geopolitical factors pecking vulture-like into Lebanon, readers will want to decide if the fault lies with the ‘Shia Crescent’ stretching from the Hezbollah heartlands of Southern Lebanon through the Bekaa valley, to the Alawite regions of Syria, and from there into into Iran; or with the ‘Israeli-American Zionist crusading’ enterprise, and its treacherous Sunni-Christian Maronite affiliated supporters. My suspicion is that one’s decision in this regard might reflect some kind of pre-formatted, previously existing ‘pre-judice’ (literally pre-judgement) regarding the affairs of the region of a type distillable to the question of whether or not one is pro or anti-American - though I could be wrong. Speaking for myself, I am sure both sides in this grissly face–off are in their own peculiar ways to blame for Lebanon’s ills, to an extent.

That said, I am not an anti-American. As such I realize all too well that the deeply ingrained 'Zoroastrian-style' instincts of the ‘Babylonian’ human psyche will want at once to conclude from this that I am necessarily pro-American in such a way that compels me to be anti-Syrian/Islamic/Palestinian or whatever. I am both pro everyone and anti-everyone depending on what is meant and when.

A curse of immediate death on this form of dualistic, either/or reasoning. Please. Its stupidity cries out to heaven for fireworks.

Why can one not be pro-everyone and anti-everyone at different times and in different ways, depending on what is meant and when? Of course, I forgot; because above all else what you are not allowed to be is an individual – unshepherded, unherded by other people’s ways of categorizing you.

Heading to Beirut

Damascus is only 127 km from Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, the only non-Jewish, democratic country in the Middle East. Well, except for Iraq, if you can call it a functioning country. Even though Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April 2005, after moving them in twenty nine years earlier in response to Palestinian-Israeli instability, strong ties still exist between the Syria and Lebanon- politically, economically and socially. Most significant of these, at least to a Western and Israeli perspective, as well as an Islamic anti-Syrian one, for example Saudi Arabia’s, are the political ties.

Officially, these are present in the form of the support Damascus gives to the pro-Syrian parties in the Lebanese parliament, the largest and most famous of which is Hezbollah, the ‘Party of God’. Unofficially, these political ties extend to Syria’s funneling of Iranian money to Hezbollah to finance that party’s attacks on northern Israeli troops and citizens, as well as, allegedly, to the recent targeted killings of numerous anti-Syrian politicians. The first and most famous of these kills was that of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. Since then numerous targeted bombs, the most recent in September 2007 have succeeded in assasinating seven anti-Syrian members of parliament opposed to Syria’s involvement in Lebanese politics. Of course, it’s alleged by some, for example The Syria Times and Hezbollah itself, that America and the ‘Zionist imperialists’ are behind these assassinations as a part of their plan to stoke up internal strife and dissension in Lebanon so that they can the better divide and rule the region. Do we want to believe this? Really? And more to the point, is it true? If so, why have so few, indeed no, pro-Syrian MPs been killed, I am left wondering? If the US really wanted strife as an end in-itself, wouldn’t it be more effective to kill some Syrian MPs too, just to encourage the flames?

Foreign involvement in Lebanon has a long history. The main players in this regard have been Syria and Israel. Apart from last years month long bombardments, Israel has been absent from Lebanon since 2000, after having been involved in Lebanon’s affairs for eighteen years, so fewer than was Syria’s twenty nine.

Actually, the loud call for foreign disengagement from Lebanon’s affairs is a call actually heard on all sides of this highly fractured and disputatious land. No country officially says it wants to dominate Lebanon’s affairs, though the main players in the region certainly try to and at the very least profoundly influence it. A significant difference, however, seems to me at least to be that whereas the US and Israel, and France and the UN and others, involve themselves because they want Lebanon to be a peaceful and prosperous and independent country, much as it was prior to 1975, Syria, and Iran in the background, either see Lebanon as a staging ground for assaults, present and future, against Israel or actually consider Lebanon to be Syrian, in practice if not in theory. Well, such is how things seem to me, in any case, in all my finite unwisdom and lack of access to the minds and hearts of the powerful of the region.

Outside politics, the Lebanese economy depends heavily on Syrian patronage for trade. In addition, Lebanon is host to approximately one million Syrian manual workers (though estimates vary). Some of these are seasonal, while others received Lebanese citizenship in 1994. Unfortunately for the 400,000+ Palestinian community living in Lebanon, these Syrian workers compete with them for jobs in one of the few employment sectors in which these Palestinians, none of whom have been granted citizenship, are permitted to work.

Socially speaking, there is a regular movement of people between the two countries as well; Syrian money is often accepted in Lebanon, and no visas are required for members of either country visiting the other. Many Lebanese have family connections across the border, while Syrians are attracted to the greater freedom and affluence to be found in Lebanon, and so come to visit and to shop, if not also to party.

So when I asked my taxi driver, who was taking me up Damascus’ Mt Qasion for a very windy night time view over the illuminated city, if he ever drives clients to Beirut, I was not surprised to hear that he often takes people to Beirut for a few hours before returning.

As regards getting to Beirut, I knew there’d be no visa worries but I didn’t know if I could pay in Syrian pounds, so made sure I had enough dollars. Getting these dollars, however, proved more of a nightmare than I dreamt possible, but I managed it anyway, eventually. I hadn’t thought it necessary to get any Lebanese money in advance and so didn’t.

You can get to Beirut in one of three ways. You can be flash and take a taxi on your own. This will cost about 2000 Syrian pounds, or twenty British quid – clearly a very reasonable price for an international jaunt, one over a range of mountains moreover (the ‘Anti-Lebanon range). Or you can share one of these taxis with others (if others are around) and pay about 5 British pounds. Or, like me, you can fail to do this because you’re unable to find anyone willing to take you to Beirut, instead of only to just over the border (unless alone); and so end up taking the relatively infrequent 5-6 hour bus journey for about one pound thirty. Because I was in no desperate rush to get to Beirut, I chose the bus and a two hour wait. As it turned out, the advantages of my doing this proved more than financial. For only in this way did I manage to meet Ian, a fellow Englishman, formerly a resident of Thailand, a lecturer in Sociology, and also on his way to Beirut.

Actually, I’d already met him briefly in the hostel we were both staying in, though we’d never actually spoken. Both of us admired and had been struck by the same evocative eyes and mystical, otherworldly bearing of a certain magical Iranian lady, as it happens, who had also been staying there.

The Golan Heights and Fatima

One of the attractions of Damascus was that from there I’d be able to visit the Syrian part of the Golan Heights. Large parts of this hilly land above the Sea of Galilee were lost to Israel in the 1967 Six days’ war. This happened when Israel took advantage of its military advances undertaken in response to Syrian air raids on Galilee. These raids had been provoked by a pre-emptive Israeli strike on Egypt, which itself had been triggered by Israeli fears of being attacked first.

Things tend to get complicated and interconnected in this part of the world. The high incidence of threats and paranoia, justifed or otherwise, lends an extra edge to the fraught convolutions of the region.

For Israel the Golan is a 'spoil of war'. One that Israel justifies its hold over by referring to the facts that a) Syria struck first - in the north I mean, and b) Syria refuses to make peace, in contrast to Egypt which did so in 1978 and Jordan in 1994. So as the logic goes: as long as the state of war continues, why should the gains of war be given up?

This is particularly the case because the Israeli occupied Golan affords excellent views over Galilee. As such, in the eyes of the Israelis, and perhaps in the eyes of the Syrians too, it might prove a very efficacious launch pad for military strikes upon Israel. Tactical necessity in this circumstance of continuing, albeit 'frozen' war (the mysterious warmth of September 6th 2007 notwithstanding) means Israel has assumed a stubborn, resolute attachment to the Golan, feeling unwilling to give it back in the absence of a peace, despite the various appeals of the UN General Assembly for her to do so in the absence of such a peace. Such an attachment, it must be admitted, is no doubt increased given the fact that 15% of Israel’s water supply comes from the Golan.

Nevertheless, the assumption one is persuaded to come to is that Israel would give it back if there were peace with Syria, in the same way Israel gave back the Sinai (eventually) to Egypt after peace was made with Egypt in 1978, courtesy of Carter, Begin and Sadat. This, indeed, is what was agreed to by Barak as part of the peace negotiations pursued with Assad in 2000: that the Golan would be returned. Well, except for that fateful ten metres of land, land that proved all too important for Hafez Al-Assad to sniff at.

Anyway, as I say, I wanted to go to the Golan and see the area for myself. Emily told me she'd like to come as well but unfortunately changed her mind because she had to study. Then I reflected on time pressures and the fact that you have to go to the Ministry of the Interior to get a Police pass and decided to postpone. I told myself that hopefully I'd have time to go when I got back from Lebanon, which I was now itching to get to.

In a hunt for a substitute distraction from Damascus I took a cab to the October War Panorama, which I hoped would be the next best thing. What Israel calls the Yom Kippur war, because Israel was invaded on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Syrians call the October War, because it happened in October (1973). What Israel considers a war it won and Syria lost is considered by Syria to be a war it won and Israel lost. Such is the flexibility of language.

The museum has proudly displayed in its garden a few Israeli tanks and anti-aircraft weapons, along with a collection of its own Russian built armaments. Inside are paintings commemorating the most significant moments in Syria's history, including Zenobia's near conquering of Rome and the moment when friendly relations were established between the ancient Syrians and the Arabs. The main attraction, the upstairs revolving panorama, is a pictorial representation of the 1974 Battle of Quneitra. Syria’s eventual success in this battle underlies Syria’s claims to have won the War, despite the fact that Syria failed to reacquire the vast majority of the land it lost in 67. To my understanding, only in the sense that Israel’s proud feelings of invincibility were questioned can it be supposed that Israel didn’t win. Or to put it another way Israel lost because the 1973 wasn’t the remarkable walkover 1967 had been. In any case, regarding Quneitra, a town right on the Syria/Golan border, Syria lost this in 67 along with the rest of the Golan but got it back again in 1974. The ferocious battle that happened here is lovingly, lavishly detailed, although Israeli flags are oddly absent from amongst the Israeli forces, while much is made, as one might expect, of the disreputable way in which the retreating Israelis trashed much of the city as a goodbye gesture.

And trashed the town of Quneitra remains. As I understand it, the political capital to be made by the Syrian Government in keeping Quneitra in the wreck of the state it’s in, still exceeds the value of doing anything more constructive with it, for example rebuilding and redeveloping it and allowing it to be resettled. So it’s kept as it was found after Israel moved out, glorious evidence of the inglorious bestiality of the losers, etc.

My guide around the museum was a friendly, happy-looking tour guide. Let’s call her Fatima. You can’t visit the museum without such a guide, which comes with the relatively expensive cost of the ticket. Because I was alone, I had her all for myself, which was nice. She kindly let me take a photograph of a painting of Bashar Assad’s family, which I think was against the rules, as well as a painting of Assad standing next to the president of North Korea, who gave money to Syria for the building of the museum. The picture of Assad’s family included his elder brother, Basil, who died tragically in a car accident in 1994. Because of this accident his younger brother’s plans to be a relatively obscure eye surgeon in London, married to his British born wife, were scuppered by his father when he ordered him back to Damascus to prepare for his future Presidential role by joining the army.

A great deal of my tour guide’s speech was clearly scripted, one suspects not by her. State propaganda, or selective interpretations of reality, might be phrases you might want to employ to describe the content if you wanted to be uncharitable. In any case it was illuminating at least of how Syria sees itself in relation to its regrettable tensions with Israel - or regrettable at least to we who wish peace for the world. Maybe the regime actually benefits from these tensions. On this my jury is still out.

What was really interesting, however, was how Fatima changed not only in what she said but how she spoke, her tone, her timbre, when we walked between the exhibits. Normally when she has larger groups she's presumably silent at these times. But now, alone with me, she wanted to speak off the script. No, she didn’t open up and confess to disbelieving everything she’d just told me about the glorious struggle etc. She just wanted to know, after I told her I was an English teacher, how she could improve her English. The surreal juxtaposition between this honest human enquiry and her self-conscious performance as a formal representative of her nation, an Ambassador of her Government, was striking and amusing. I suggested she could listen to the radio, to BBC World Service for example, or else watch CNN or BBC World. Also that she could join the Damascus British Council library, from which she could borrow books and tapes at various grades of language competence. A problem, of course, is that this way she doesn’t practice her speaking, nor can her grammar errors be corrected. For this she needs to attend a course. I suspected, rightly, that her pay bracket would exclude her from the British Council’s courses (which are typically the best in any given city) – she sighed whimsically as I suggested such a course – but I told her there must be other cheaper courses, many of which would be almost as good if not just as good. Finally I left her with an idea that seemed to impress her. Why not ask your employers to pay for British Council lessons? You're an important tour guide in English, speaking to people like me. Lots of companies pay for their staff to learn at The British Council if it assists the selling of their products. Why not ask them to subsidise you so you can be even better at your job? Of course, I didn’t expect her Government to agree to the idea but one can but try.

Update

As my presumably small readership will have noted, I've been silent for over a week. This is not because I have become uncharacteristically laconic and spared the world my words but because I have opened a new blog at:

www.livingoutsidetime.blogspot.com

On that blog I write about my life and salient thoughts since leaving Egypt, and I will write about Kuwait, where I have now been living for 8 days.

This blog will continue to post entries about the rest of my trip through Middle East. I promise to get through to Egypt one day, achieving finally in my words what I accomplished in my body. But it may take awhile. Internet access is limited here for me. Obviously, I begin to forget things so the clock is ticking I know.

The Middle East and Turkey

When Emily and I talked generally about the Middle East we sighfully agreed that it’s in a mess.

She blames Israel and America more than I do. She focused her thoughts on America however, since she feels as an American that America is more her business than is Israel, which is an attitude I very much respect. Personally, I want to look more into the history of the region, and note how the problems might be traced to the collapse of The Ottoman Empire, which in its own bungling, tyrannical way until 1918 had at least kept the region in relative peace and harmony for most of the previous 400 years. The opportunity only arose for the French and the British (that would be people like me) to carve the region up into artificially devised nation states under their own Christian suzerainty because the allies had won the First World War, and because the Ottomans had elected to fight on the losing side. When I was in Gallipoli I learnt how Turkey’s decision to side with the Germans was actually a very close run thing. Nineteenth century tradition put Turkey on the side of the British and the French against the Russians, after all. Now, in 1914, while Russia was still the enemy, so too were Britain and France, and Germany, strong as she’d become in the late nineteenth century, was not strong enough to prove a good bet for the Ottomans to support.

The ‘What if’ train of thought regarding the Ottomans choosing different friends during the First World War interests me greatly.

· Turkey, had she joined the Allies’ side, would have allowed the Allies, early in the War, to open a third front against the Central Powers. The Allies would have quickly got what they would have only achieved eventually if Gallipoli had been successful: a way, with the Russians, of exerting an encircling pressure on Germany and Austria from three sides, from the South as well as from the East and West. Also, Turkey’s support would have allowed Russia and the West easier access for military co-operation through the Dardanelles. The War might not have ‘been over by Christmas’, but would it have lasted a full four years and led to as many deaths as it did? Would it, moreover, through the sufferings it imposed on the Russian people, have established the conditions appropriate for the reception there of the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. Would the Russian revolution have happened? Would we have witnessed Stalinism? Might the idea of communitarianism, of there being possibilities for communal life beyond the power of money, still be a relatively pure one? Might capitalism today not be quite as smug as it is, if communitarianism as a vision had not been mired as it has been by the disastrous legacy of the Bolsheviks?

· Although the Ottoman Empire had been weakening throughout the nineteenth century, without the experience of defeat in the First World War, would it have collapsed as it did? If Turkey had remained either neutral or fought on the Allies side the chances of Turkey losing the War would have been lower, the chances of her Empire surviving correspondingly higher. If it had survived, as it probably would have, how different would the Middle East be today? It is hard to know. Most probably Turkey’s empire would have been dismantled at some point because it had been ailing for so long. But perhaps this would have happened in a more gradual, less arbitrary manner, in a manner moreover overseen by Muslims, not Christians. Maybe the Persian, Arab and Turkish Muslims would have been able to come to some kind of peaceful agreement as to how best to reconfigure political relations between their peoples in a new dispensation replacing the Ottoman. Then, not only might the numerous twentieth century wars between Muslims not have happened, but the sense of humiliation that the Islamic world has felt in the face of Western and Israeli power in the region not have occurred. In consequence, Muslims not feeling such a resentment and injustice, would have meant far less impetus would have been given to the development of Islamic fundamentalism, a phenomenon which, as many a Muslim would agree, has wrought considerable damage not only on Islam itself but on the world in general.

· Quite probably, there’d be no state of Israel today, for good or ill (depending on your opinion). Or at least not the kind of State of Israel we have now. Zionism begins in the late nineteenth century so one cannot attribute the origin of the desire amongst Jews to increase their presence in the Holy Land to an opportunism provoked by the Ottoman Empire’s collapse. Quite probably Turkey’s nineteenth century decision to make land legally available for Jewish buyers would have continued. Had the Turkish Empire survived, the British wouldn’t have written the Balfour Declaration but possibly Turkey, as a victorious ally of the British and French, might have been persuaded to continue their history of relative toleration towards the Jews and allowed them some more land, or even a state of their own, under the umbrella of their continuing imperial dominion. That would have been more likely if Turkey underwent a degree of secularization in the years after WWI, something which might still have happened, at least to an extent, without the specific need of an Ataturk, though by no means necessarily. Also important is that much of the impetus behind the intensification of Jewish desire to settle the Holy Land in the 1930s and 1940s was the threat from, and the need to escape, the European Holocaust. Hitler may still have risen to power in a nationalist reaction to the German defeat in WWI. But how long would that war have lasted? Surely it would have been over sooner? And then, would the defeated Germany have been quite as seriously humiliated as it was by the 1919 Treaty of Versailes, a treaty which to a great extent was a calculated act of vengeance against Germany for the very expensive war that had lasted over four years and cost millions of lives? And if in consequence of Germany not being as crushed into the dust as she was, would we have seen Hitler? And if not, and had not experienced the holocaust might we have found that many more Jews would have been happy to stay as they had for generations in a Europe that many of them had grown to consider their home?

· There having been no need for the failed Gallipoli campaign, Australia and New Zealand wouldn’t have experienced their greatest military disaster ever. Nor, on the other hand, would they have felt the same impetus that they did feel, given the incompetent callousness of the British High Command, to sever (or loosen at least) the umbilical cord connecting them with the Motherland and so develop a sharper sense of separate, national identities.

· Would the population transfers/massacres of the Armenians have happened? Turkey justifies its understanding of the non-genocidal treatment it dealt out to the Armenians by referring to Armenian support as a fifth column within Turkey for the Russians, against whom Turkey was then fighting. So clearly, the Turks admit there were some significant attacks on the Armenians, even if they didn’t amount to genocide as they claim they didn’t. But if Turkey hadn’t supported Germany, there would have been no fighting against the Russians for the Armenians to support at all. On the other hand, if Turkey’s intentions and treatment towards the Armenians were indeed as genocidal as the Armenians and many other countries say they were, would they have behaved this way if they’d been on the side of the Allies? I suspect that had Turkey chosen differently, the country would have been less destabilized, which would have given Turkey less cover or justification for its policy. Also, it would also have given Turkey less need for such a policy, especially if the war had ended quickly and the Turkish nation had not felt under the mortal peril that it did feel under. After all, the Turks had not started massacring Armenians when the Ottoman Empire had been alive and kicking, albeit ailing. They only started, according to the Armenians, in 1915, when it was under the threat of invasion and collapse. And they only intensified their policies further when there was a need to ensure the new country's future identity against its potential internal enemies. I am explaining, not justifying, the genocidal policies, if indeed they existed, as I suspect they did.

This type of 'What if', or counter-factual historiography, has come in for a fair amount of criticism, much of it reasonable. That said, indulging in it is fun and can provide insights. Or at least it can help you imagine how things might have been different, as a result of causes that led us to the present not happening. The problem is that we cannot know if a similar (to whatever extent) historical reality might nevertheless have been arrived at by a different route. Nor can we know what unforeseen events might have happened which may have deflected events off unimaginably to us now. A shadow presumption I was loosely holding throughout the above was that it would have been 'better' for humanity as a whole (as well as for the Turks) if the Turks had fought alongside the allies. But who knows if it might have been worse ultimately, if unforeseen developments I cannot imagine had occured. And obviously I am not intending to blame the Turks for all that happened, since all agents are responsible for what they do. I was just thinking out loud, as it were, and reflecting on how so many things in history are interconnected, and how relevant the past is to the present.

Ten Metres and the Moon

A couple of days before I met Emily and her friends Israel performed that raid you'll have heard about, the air raid that Israel at the time denied but has now admitted performing.

Some circles say Israel was attacking an emergent nuclear capacity imported via Tartous from North Korea. Whatever it was (obviously it was something), will no doubt come out in the wash.

From what I gather the Syrian people are increasingly worried about a war between the two countries. Personally I fail to understand how such would serve the self-interest of either nation. Syria is threatening vaguely to retaliate somehow in the indeterminate future. Israel, after owning up, eventually, to invading Syrian airspace declares that her defenses have been tested and proved resilient (whether that be a euphemism for a second Osirak or not).

It must be nice to say that, in any case, after last year's embarrassment at the hands of Hezbollah.

But the main feature of the whole scenario has been silence.

A weird thing about silence is that when it arises inappropriately, as it has now, it often tends to increase attention not decrease it, which is what you'd expect those being silent would prefer.

Can you believe that Syria and Israel came to within ten metres of land of finding peace in 2000? I can, but then I bear no illusions about the eccentricity of this particualr region of the blue planet. Syria wanted the beach. The beach of the Sea of Galilee. Israel said no. Syria said no to Israel's no and then both sides decided that, actually, on second thoughts we prefer being at war to losing or failing to gain ten metres of land. How stupid of us to forget.

This is but one of the myriad examples of the insanity of human posturing collecting around the fertile crescent. I could name many others. So, no doubt, could you. Well, as long as they like all this hatred and fear and histrionic pomposity - let them all get on with it is what I think; or at least am often tempted to.

Emily, if I might risk the perils of categorisation, is somewhat anti-Israeli in her stance. Beyond that vague brush I wouldn't want to delineate. It was very interesting to hear from her about how badly educated the American people are about the situation in the Middle East and of how grateful she feels to have learnt the other perspective and expereinced how things 'really are'. The Media and education system in America, so she said, strides a fairly uncontroversially pro-Israeli line, in the context of its broader loyalty to the line of the American military, industrial and political complex.

Of course, to be 'pro-Israeli' can mean any number of positions from extreme left (the Israeli Meretz party for example, which some might even call anti-zionist) to extreme right, where ideas of removing the Palestinians from Israel proper and extending Israel beyond its 1967 borders begin to emerge. I'm not exactly clear where America positions itself, but somewhere in the middle I would imagine. Well, except amongst the Christian fundamentalists who'd be somewhere however wackily to the right, despite their inherent theological and somewhat patronising prejudices against Judaism.

I was a little unsure how Emily rated my stance regarding Israel. I wasn't that clear in my statements mainly because my position is not clear or simplistic, just as the region isn't. But I reckon she gathered that I'm not anti-Israeli, in that I think such a polarisation of reality, in this field as in all, is childish and irresponsible and that both sides, or as it were all sides in the Middle Eastern dispute, are to blame and at fault and need to yield (so it is in all conflicts). If that makes me an anti-Palestinian in some person's mind on account of my being a 'status quo' supporting fence-sitter then an anti-Palestinian I am in the mind of that person, but not in mine. Nothing would please me more than for Palestinians to be as joyful and happy as their fellow Muslims in Turkey and Syria seem to be, and for them to benefit, as can we all, from friendly relations with the ancestors of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. Are we sure that makes me anti-Palestinian? I suggest it does not.

It was enjoyable telling Emily about my experiences as a 19 year old with the organisation headed by the curious, Korean gentleman known as Sun Myung Moon. She was shocked at first when I told, as are many. Then, as usual, she became less so when I told her I was only 'with the Moonies' for three weeks, that I never gave them any money (ok, three pounds), never stayed with them, never prayed at any of their services, and never abandoned my questioning mind to them. I say that just to make things clear that 'I Was Never a Moonie'. And I say that because, so I later learnt, alot of people at university thought I had been a Moonie all the years that I was there, just because they had learnt, correctly, that I had spent some time with them. Even highly educated Oxbridge rejects, so it seems, will formulate their own projections in the absence of supporting facts. So I'm obviously a bit sensitive about that.

It's nonethless true, on the other hand, that the Moonies' ministrations left my cognitive faculties somewhat temporarily impaired. I hadn't asked them to warp my mind, mind you. No, they did that without my needing to ask. How kind. Actually, whether or not they used the sophisticated mind controlling techniques, learnt during the Korean War, that many say they use, I'm not sure. Certainly I could believe this. But no doubt much of the effect they wrought on me must be linked to my own susceptibility to them at the time. It's true, before I paid them a visit I was young, I was idealistic (actually I still am! Or at leat when I'm not depressed). I was also unhappy with my University studies and generally feeling pretty weird and dislocated. I was very glad, moreover, to talk to people who at least pretended to talk about God and life seriously, with passion, without being conventionally religious. With people, who to all appearences sake, seemed extremely friendly and welcoming and even, might it be ventured, 'loving'. All that swept me into their power temporarily, it is true.

Beyond that there's no doubt that my experiences with the Reverend had an enormous impact on my life on account of how I reacted to the experience. Materially it meant I dropped out of University. I’m not sure I really needed to but to my Mother and the Principal of my college it felt like a good enough reason to convalesce. I didn’t put up any resistance. In any case there was still that original dissatisfaction with studying Philosophy (too arid, too pedantic) that had lain behind my lunar expedition in the first place. In any case taking time out sounded like a good idea. This was also because….

Spiritually, internally, the effect on leaving the Moonies had been dramatic. Note I talk specifically about what happened after I disengaged from The Unification Church, not the effect of that Church itself, which had been to turn me into a paranoid zombie. As I emerged from its malign and tentacled snare, which had stretched itself throughout my teenage mind, I experienced a tremendous feeling of rebirth and liberation, and ensuing psychic states of peace, bliss and ecstasy of a kind I’d never known before. Without question I increasingly came to associate this liberating force (correctly or incorrectly, delusionally or accurately) with the specific transcendent person of Jesus Christ, who became a very real and mystical presence for me.

As a child I had, to be honest, always held an extremely soft spot for the Nazarene. This absolutely in spite of my bored lack of interest in and basic disrespect for the established Christian Churches. Overall, however, my affection and regard had been cerebral and idealistic, not existential as such. I thought Jesus was a great and tremendous person, as so many people do. It was only after my rejection of the Moonies that my sense of closeness to Jesus and the vividness of my spiritual experiences in general came to significant life. The practical effects of this period of near mystical trance were twofold. Firstly, I lost all interest in finding work or engaging much in externally directed activities, keen as I became to savour and luxuriate in my newfound sense of a discovered inner treasure. Luckily, due to a modest trust fund and a mother who didn’t mind me doing nothing very much, this was possible. Secondly, I decided to return to Durham University in the autumn of 1991, but to study Theology this time as a way of giving expression to my newfound, developing interest in the spiritual, and the Christian tradition in particular.

Syria and The Family

The funniest, most memorable thing Emily said was about religion, something hard to evade in the Middle East. Reflecting in general on the madness of the world, she noted how bizarre it would be if Christians had their own variant of the muezzin's call to prayer, publically, loudly broadcasted:

'Drink the Blood of Christ! You must drink the blood of Christ to be saved!' shouted out five times a day

Imagining such a spectacle floating over a city full of people going about their business made me chortle and wonder at how eeirie, alarming and strange that would be.

Certainly the Islamic version seems less freaky. Undoubtedly, its content is less dramatic and extreme. Or maybe I only say that becasue I don't speak Arabic or hear it everyday. Church bells, our version of the call to prayer, don't mean anything. They're just a reminder that we ought to be up on the hill. If there must be a public chivvying (must there? Really?) I definitely prefer things this way, to say nothing specific about God, at least in public. Another advantage is that bells are less inclined to ring out at 5 in the morning.

It was fascinating to get a glimpse of the nature of Syrian family life, hearing about the Christian family Emily's living with. The Christians are just as religious as the Muslims and have similar attitudes towards family, courtship and marriage. Apart from obvious theological differences, then, the only existential differences are in the Christians' attire (no headscarves) and their belief in the sinlessness of alcohol, if drunk moderately of course. In practice, both Muslims and Christians drink in Syria, only Christians less of a guilty conscience.

As a Westerner from the progressive realms of family dysfunction and disintegration, I've been programmed to appreciate the all-surpassing supremacy of the individual in matters of familial politics. In the West, to an ever increasing degree, the extent to which families stay together and the shape of that togetherness when they do, is determined by the free individual decisions and commitments made by each of the members involved. Templates of formal duty and obligation being oh so droll and pre-sixties, it's now up to us in our own ways to determine if and how the nuclear, let alone extended, family survives.

Personally, I want to have my cake and eat it. Ultimately I feel I should be able to. Why else have the cake, or even make it? I want there to be no formal regimen dictating how families should be structured or interact. Yet I want that they cohere, survive and blossom into ever intensifying domains of happiness, wherein an intensity of personal freedom and authenticity combines with an intensity of rootedness, connectedness, and love. I fear, nevertheless, that as so often in life this is easier said than done, especially given our current Western spiritlessness and the moral disorientation we experience; on account of which we wrestle to make sense of the right accommodation to make between the claims of self and other.

Having lost to secular materialism a reliable mooring or anchor for a vocabulary of duty and obligation, it's difficult, and can sound hollow and trite, to tell people how they should behave. The only potent basis to do so seems to be the appeal to victimhood, as a tactic for securing self-advancement or compensation for real or imagined slights. This essentially punitive dynamic keeps alive the ghost of an overarching moral firmament. But it's a firmament that makes no demands on us and asks nothing from us, to deflect us from our freedom; until, that is, it rubs its nose in our faces when, as a result of its moral silence, we end up pissing each other off, often mightily. Its mode of operation, therefore, is passive not active. Morality reigns, but in a reactive, not proactive way.

One gets the impression, from our what is said by our media, art, teachers, even from our religious leaders, that little interferes with or questions this individual freedom. And yet ours, nonetheless, is an astonishingly litigious and punitive society; ruled by fears of petty officialdom, permeated with the strangulating self-righteousness of the aggrieved. That paradox is a central conundrum of our time. Through society's impositions and restrictions, we are daily reminded that we are not islands and must live together, despite the fact that our ideology is one of atomised individuality, enjoining loyalties to none higher than the self.

Needless to say, it's not like this in Syria, or the Middle East generally, where life constitutes a different kind of bed of thorns. Here the moral universe is still proactive, sometimes very. But with that same love of imbalance that we share - only differently expressed, the Islamic world makes certain to render its interpretation of proactive morality extreme and one-sided.

So much that our own 'Enlightened', democratic, individualised instincts tell us was wrong about the life of our own ancestors is still very much alive in the Middle East. By which I mean the imposition on individuals by the community to which they belong of an iron-fisted, inflexible order or schemata of how to live their lives. Young women, even Christian ones, must be home early in the evening and can't do what they want, or marry whom they want, unless their desires happen to co-incide with their parents'. As for young men, these too suffer, since unless they are to be secretive or indulge in gay adventures, they can't enjoy romantic love, let alone sex, until they're married, something which itself requires not only their parents' agreement but the satisfaction of their girlfriend's parents that they are respectable and, more importantly, sufficiently rich.

Much of this I already knew. What I was interested to hear from Emily, though, who has spent a long time talking to young Syrians and other Middle Easterners both in English and her rapidly improving Arabic, is what young people themselves feel about family life.

As I knew, loyalty to family is fundamental. Such a loyalty is nothing strange anywhere in the world except in the west to an increasing extent. In Syria, family is so often an economic necessity in any case, even before higher emotional or ideological considerations of love of family are considered. Young people will stay at home before they marry not only for reasons of propriety or mutual affection but economics, since parents, one hopes, make for cheap or even free landlords. Similarly, in an age of limited welfare, and unreliable employment and pension provision, to be old and without a family is not wise. So old people will often stay with their children until they die, and condition the young to look after the old, reminding them that they too will one day look and feel as unimpressive as they do. But beyond that it's clear Syrians hold the Family in a very high regard and consider their attachments to other family members to be more important than any other.

This is not so strange from a Western point of view, though it may increasingly be from a Western European point of view. In Slovakia, for example, young people have similar economic relations to their family. In addition, young Slovaks will also talk about their families, and visit their parents, in a way that clearly shows a very high esteem for the institution. How much of that esteem is heartfelt, how much routinised habit and convention, however, I was never that sure. A certain suspicion of taboo collects around talking negatively about ones family relations. Of that I was sure. Given the prevalence of domestic violence in Slovakia, yet the fact that I've personally heard about none, suggests to me at least that carpets must bulge in Slovakia, having had much swept under them.

Regarding Syria, I wouldn't want to speculate about the prevalence of domestic violence in the family. I'm not sure what kind of figures exist, or how data could be collected? I would suspect that the presumption is that all is harmonious in the family; that if it isn't, insubordination from children and wife is usually is to blame; that redresses made against the more tender elements of the family against that insubordination are justified, and that ultimately all this is the business of the head of the household, the man. One suspects Syrians, like most Middle Easterners, will basically be thinking – mind your own business, oh Western man of inferior religiosity and disintegrating culture. My family is private, it is not even a domain for other Muslims, let alone you.

Anyway, I'm just trying to map out the reality of the matter. If I am mistaken, I apologise, especially if I have offended, which I'm obviously not trying to do. I never try to cause offense. Offense as an emotion closes the mind and retards discourse. I do not seek boring, stilted or defensive interaction. Still, if one does find what I write offensive, join the club. I find much offensive about the world, including the idea that people might find me offensive when I'm not trying to be offensive:) Oh well, the world is an offensive place. That is no new revelation.

I didn't ask Emily about domestic violence. I just asked what Syrians had said about the normal restrictions of family life. She found they weren't always that happy about them but considered them so normal that nothing much could be done about them. Speaking out about the regulations or defying them is rare.

No doubt Syrians see family quite differently than I. You think normal what you know. It's hard for outsiders to understand or judge different forms of cultural life. Usually if you try you either idolise them as excessively superior to your own, or else desperately inferior if not evil.

Personally I wouldn't like to live in restrictive families that tell their adult members what to do, or how to live. I didn't like restrictiveness even when I was a child. I'd like it even less as an adult. But hey that's just me.

I'm impressed, anyway, that their families are so strong and cohere, unlike ours. Its just that, for me, I'd like a family that could combine that with radical freedom. A difficult concoction for sure. A challenge.

The Popularity of Arabic

I arranged to meet Emily by the big Ummayad mosque, the main mosque across from the 3rd century Western Temple gate, Rome's offering to Jupiter. To here Jesus is understood at some time in the future to return before he converts all Christians to Islam. So much for the much anticipated drama of the Mount of Olives, then.

Emily brought along her Australian friend, Sarah, and an American called Kevin, who only arrived in Damascus the previous day. Like Emily they're here to improve their Arabic. Apparently, so I've been reading, interest in studying Arabic has risen noticeably since 9/11. I wonder what the motivations behind this might be. I can think of three reasons, all interrelated, in no special order of importance.

Firstly, on 9/11 the world suddenly became an 'interesting place' again, in a way it had stopped being when the Berlin Wall collapsed and nothing acted any longer as a defining, chiselling force to give shape to America's sense of identity and importance. Unrivalled hegemony was all well and good, but a bit vacuous and tended to mean the President's sexual proclivities became front page news. Nothing else had the power to fascinate in a more serious way. The nineties were years of global innocence, but trivial and inane. At last with 9/11, America had a proper enemy again and the West could get down to the serious business of being frightened and martial, just like in the good old, cold war days days when we could believe, like we can now, that our whole lives are being lived inside a second rate Hollywood blockbuster. On the principle 'Know your Enemy', therefore, Arabic became important as the language of the 'enemy', despite the fact that most Muslims don't speak Arabic as their first language.

Secondly, some people in the west felt guilty for the ways they perceived the West had treated the Arabic sphere in previous decades, to a degree sensing that New York had deserved being attacked by Al-Qaeda, despite the fact that lots of non-westerners died in these attacks and that much of the the Islamic world immediately condemned them. So again, on the principle, 'Know your enemy' but for the opposite reason - to be reconciled to it - Arabic became more attractive as a field of study.

Thirdly, I imagine Arabic has become more popular simply because more people are now aware of the Middle East than they were before. No other geo-political region of the world receives as much interest and attention, because of 9/11 centrally, but also because of the worsening of the Israeli-Palestinian situation after the failed Camp David summit and the invasion of Iraq.

I definitely got the impression, which was nice, that the people I met in Damascus were only learning Arabic for the second of the two reasons, for peaceable and genuinely educative ones, which is obviously a good thing.

Ash Sham (aka Damascus)

Four and a half million people live in Damascus and they do so 600 metres above sea level.

Today I feel like being historical. Apologies to those affected or offended if I'm wrong or oversimplifying.

So it appears, Abraham hung out here for awhile before moving south to Canaan. Later, from about 1100 BC, Damascus was the capital of an independent state called Aram Damascus which got into fights with the Israelites. With the Northern Israelites, it shared a common enemy in Assyria, a far larger Kingdom than either, to which both ultimately lost their independence and a large part of their populations in the eighth century BC, since it was a custom of Assyria to deport its conquered peoples and resettle them. Certainly, the notion that over 25 thousand Northern Israelites were moved east is the axiomatic belief underlying the indefatigable idea of the hidden, abidingly significant, existence of the 'Lost Ten Tribes of Israel'. Regarding the Aram Damascenes, it seems they were moved by one Tiglath-Pilsener III, whose name obviously suggests he'd have done better brewing beer, south to the Moabite town of Kir, near the Dead Sea, or to Al-Karak, as it's now known in Jordan.

Then, after the Assyrian domination, like so many places in this part of the world, Damascus was controlled first by Babylonia, then by Persia, Greece, Rome and finally by Byzantium.

During the Greek era under the Seleucids, it shone less significantly as a cultural centre than Lattakia and Antakya (Antioch) to the north, but under the Romans it became a more important city at last, as the northernmost member of the Decapolis, a union of 10 semi-independent cities; and then from AD 37 as part of the quasi-independent Kingdom of the Nabateans. Christocentric as ones education is, during this time one might say the most notable event to have occurred in Damascus was Paul's decision, courtesy of a celestial vision, to stop persecuting Christian Jews and become one himself. Before long he would take the message of the Gospel to the gentiles. A formative moment in the history of the Gospel and the world one might to say. And for good or ill too, depending on your opinion.

During the Islamic period Damascus' most important era was when it was the capital city of the first Ummayad Caliphate (Islamic Kingdom essentially) from 665 to 750, when Islamic hegemony reached to Northern Spain and the Punjab in Pakistan. Until the Abbasids and Baghdad usurped the supremacy, as Dynastys and cities do, since when Damascus has never been as important. After the Abbasids, Damascus yielded to the successive overlordship of the Fatimids from Cairo, the Seljuk Turks, the Ayyubids from Cairo- including Saladin - though some of these ruled from Damascus, the Mamlukes (from Cairo), whose rule was interrupted by the Mongols for awhile, the Ottoman Turks from Istanbul, and finally, after two years of a fledgeling independence, to the French of all people, whose twenty six year period of control finally ended in 1946 .

I didn't get to explore much beyond the Old City and the area of the new city directly to its west. Though I did find the time to get to Qasion, a mountainous area of bars and restaurants offering impressive views of the city. Though I'd probably have seen more and had a better time if it wasn't dark when I was there and hadn't been so windy.

Damascus

At twenty two dollars my room was the most expensive I'd had in a while. I thought I'd flavour my entrance to the Syrian capital with a dose of luxury. Unfortunately, with no air con, no TV, and no private bathroom it definitely wasn't worth the price. Even access to BBC World in the living room area and the included breakfast didn't prevent me migrating to a hostel for the following two nights.

In the evening I strolled towards the old city, about half a kilometre to the east past the railway station. As soon as I entered the main covered bazaar I knew that in a crucial way the Syria I'd come to love was gone. The prevalence of other westerners was far higher. The inevitable effect on the locals was to make the likes of me both less of a curiosity, less of a novelty, and more of a focus for that kind of systematised, commercial targeting that always develops in tourist centres. I noted how the tremendously friendly, welcoming spirit of the Syrian people, though still in evidence, was less vivid, had become mixed with traces of an inauthenticity I hadn't felt before. This, no doubt, was born of a spirit of over-familiarity with the likes of I, a wearing away of that fascination for the strange and exotic which we westerners occasion in the rest of the country and would do here too, if only there weren't so many of us. It might also have to do with a greater knowledge on their part, acquired through practice and experience, of how we might best be persuaded to part with our money. Though I grant that's me being cynical.

On the other hand I can see how my perception was influenced by having come to Damascus after seeing so much of the rest of the country first. Most people don't do this. Most travellers come straight to Damascus, then travel on to either Aleppo or Palmyra, before seeing the more obscure areas. Some, of course, won't leave Damascus at all, though I'd say these would mainly be the westerners here on business. The other group of westerners I met in Damascus, beyond businessmen and travellers, were students, usually in their early twenties, here to study Arabic, often as part of a degree they were pursuing at home. If they took a course, it might be a month long, or last for many months. Or you could just turn up and plan to hang out in the place, learning Arabic while you're here. This was Emily's plan.

I was looking forward to seeing Emily again, who'd I'd left in Bergama in early August on her way to Izmir and the Greek Islands. Talking to her was not like talking to most people, no offence to most people intended, and I was looking forward to a bit of energy and fire in my life. We'd arranged to meet by the big Ummayad mosque at noon on the day after my arrival.

Before we met, however, I thought I'd check out the British Council in the morning because I was thinking I might like to work there. But there was nobody I could talk to about opportunities. So after reading the Observer for awhile and acknowledging, as expected, that the internal decor of the building was identical to the BC's in Sofia, Kathmandu, Cairo, Hong Kong and Bratislava, I took myself to the fancy Four Seasons. Here I enjoyed a five dollar coffee, a sofa, and the agreeable, amusing experience of being mistaken for somebody rich.

Reality Check

This blog has been hanging around in Syria for quite a while now. I just wanted to inform the universe that in fact I left Syria for Lebanon on September 10th. So I'm more than slightly behind. Now, as it happens, I'm in Jerusalem.

Anyway, for good or ill I decided to go slowly and be detailed and thorough and concentrate on some facinating conversations I have had, even if a lighter, more nimble approach might have been preferable to some or all of my readers - whoever you are.

A summary of where I've been since Lattakia before I return to my story. I'll try to sum up each place in no more than eight words.

Damascus - Massive old city, far more westerners

Beirut (Lebanon) - Soldiers on the street. Rife factionalism and Starbucks

Baalbek (Lebanon) - Enormous, extremely evocative ruins. Hezbollah T-shirts

Tripoli (Lebanon) Sunni dominated. Like Syria. No Hezbollah. Cool castle

Sidon (Lebanon) - Lovely gentle beach town. Very narrow streets

Tyre (Lebanon) - Lots of ancient ruins. Swam in the Mediterranean

Damascus (Syria) - Because I didn't want to fly to Jordan

Ma aoula (Syria) - Christian mountain town. Good views. Bought some Arak

Amman (Jordan) - Big and dusty. Ramadan strictly observed

Bethany (Jordan) - Israeli flag. Jesus baptised, Elijah caught a chariot

Petra (Jordan) - Vast Nabatean ruins built into rock. Camels. Bedouins.

Amman (Jordan) - Because I needed to cross at Allenby Bridge.

Jerusalem (Israel) - Schizoid capital of the Universe

Bethlehem (Israel) -Birthplace of creator of the Universe, (to Christians)

Tel Aviv (Israel) - Secular Israelis. Cafes and powdery sand. Diaspora museum

Jerusalem (Israel) - Because its Sukkot. Rest of Israel closes down

So now you know where I am and where I've been.

Plan now is to go back to Jordan on monday. I have to go back so I can get a Jordanian exit stamp. Otherwise supicious eyes will know I've been to Israel (as they might if they read my blog:)). Also, I left some stuff there. Then I'll rush down to Aqaba, take a boat to Nuweiba in Egypt and head to Cairo. My flight to Vienna leaves Thursday morning, the 11th October. One and a half days in Bratislava to remind myself what good beer tastes like and to pack up more of my stuff. Then I fly to London.

Hama in Noisy Motion

My abiding memory of Hama is the creaking noise of the turning of the enormous wheels called norrias that are scattered in the centre of town. Because both wheel and axle are made of wood, nothing works as a lubricant to induce a graceful flow. So an unearthly groaning, suggestive of a wounded extra-terrestrial dinosaur, breaks out from their motion. I saw one man hopefully trying to throw water on one. Did this help? It didn't seem to but maybe it limits damage in the long run. I'm no expert.

I'd read that young boys jump from the planks that push the water round as they turn but alas they weren't out and about when I was there.

In addition to the wheels, there's a hill that nothing seems to be on the top of, and the first modern shopping centre I'd seen in Syria. As well as this, there are some interesting lanes in and around the old city but, as I've written earlier, Hama suffered considerably during the bombings of 1982, when the whole city was besieged by the Government, so it's not quite what it was.

Finally, after twelve days in Syria I got on a bus for Damascus. And what a bus, not like any I'd seen. The seats were that light beige colour you find in swanky mercedes and jaguars; and so was their comfort, while the leg room was excessive and highly welcome. In considerable luxury I read up about Damascus and looked forward to the capital.

Liar

As I was waiting for my bus to Hama I did a very rare thing, for me anyway. I directly, unambiguously lied to someone's face. I don't just mean I allowed a mistaken impression to arise in his mind by remaining silent about a certain matter; or that I concealed the 'whole truth' about something and was 'economical with the truth'. Neither of these are lying, not really. They're just not being fully open, which is different.

If you insist they're forms of lying I'll say they're only 'negative' forms of lying. Spoken behaviours whereby you refuse to assume responsibility for the mistaken conclusions generated by your listener's projections onto or behind your words. The impression they might provoke could very well be contrary to what you meant, but that isn't because you uttered words confirming or constructing their false understanding. Doing that, as I see it, is the real lying - lying by commission, not omission. Obviously though, in a perfect world, i.e not this one, it would be wonderful if we could all be forever open and transparent with one another.

I didn't feel ashamed of my 'positive' lie. This might be because I didn't particularly warm to the 19 year old who asked me his lie-prompting question. If I'd told him the truth, this might have provoked him and his surrounding gang to pay me even more attention, when at that moment I just wanted to read my newspaper. But I must confess, there was a smidgeon of fear too; especially since this was an Alawite area and that, given my unusually pronounced sense of my own importance, I'd come to imagine I might be under the special scrutiny of the Government. I thought he might be a Government agent. Even if he wasn't I still didn't want to risk upping the stakes of my fledgling paranoia.

So when he asked me if I'd been to Israel I just said no while simultaneously wondering if my eye contact was relaxed and unassuming enough. I suppose that when you lie the eyes can give you away, either because they suddenly become distracted, or else too ardent in their gaze.

He seemed very proud of his culture and country. He was glad to point out, as I'd noticed, that the women are less hidden here. This is because there is more freedom than in conservative Aleppo and further into the Sunni areas to the east. Then a friend of his asked me if in the West women are different from men. I knew what he was getting at but I thought I'd try to be funny. So I gestured the outline of some shapely breasts and agreed that yes, they are different. It worked, which was great. What he wanted to say, of course, was that women have too much freedom, and wanted to know if I agreed. Unfortunately for him I didn't and just said that in my culture men and women are equal, which they are, if only in theory. He didn't want to defend his thoughts about women. I suspected he considered them self-evidently true.

No Beach

I never got to visit the sea in Lattakia, even though the Mediterranean was one of the major reasons for my visit. If I'd taken a taxi further north, I'd have found a beach but didn't fancy leaving town again.

As it was I was confused. The logic for my confusion was unassailable. Lattakia was on the sea side. They even had the requisite palmtrees lining the coast. I couldn't understand why I couldn't find a beach, so I caved into accepting what I'd begun to suspect.

The port, with all its cranes and cargo containers, boats, fences and general port paraphenalia - all of which had been annoyingly placed opposite my hostel - stretched along the entirety of Lattakia's coast, and blocked all access to the sea. Whoever was responsible for the planning of this city obviously didn't care much for sunbathing or sand. Nor did he recognise that he had the power to make the dream real and allow people to have a beer at one of Lattakia's lovely bars before rushing into the sea, as any sane being would want to do in this heat. Why didn't he put the port a bit further up the coast, where there wasn't a town, and fewer would be swimmers like me to frustrate? Very odd.

So I loafed around and had more coffee. Muhammad had lent me an English language academic manual from Damascus University so I read that, much absorbed. If this and other literary works I've browsed are at all representative of Arabic discourse, it seems the Arabic mind shares the Slovak love of the long sentence. Maybe Arabic thought is different when not translated, but in English a full army of subclauses and spiralling devices are employed. Personally I've always rather liked long, windy sentences but I know they're pretty unfashionable in the West.

The prose style, even in translation, was beautiful and hypnotic. It had a gracious subtlety that made me think of the moon, like so much does in Islam. Why that is and how that is I'm not quite sure, but that the crescent is a symbol of Islam must mean I'm not saying anything too controversial.

An overriding sense I get when I read Islamic authors is the presumption of the existence of a shared set of commonly held fundamental perspectives between writer and reader. Relativism, the chaotic multifacetedness of the Western post-modern condition, is not even glimpsed at, not reckoned a remote possibility. Not for Muslims has Thomas Carlyle's Sea of Faith begun to recede. Is this good, is this bad, is the Pope a Catholic, is Mecca the centre of the universe? Am I entitled to say? I see advantages and disadvantages. I see how those elements of Islam which I appreciate can be traced to its resolute defence of the homogeneity of its collective psychic, emotional and spiritual life. People in Islam know who they are, where they come from, where they're going. They know what life means, what death means, how the sun, the sea and the land fit together; they know exactly, in precise detail, what the relationships should be between subjectivity and objectivity, the private and the public, freedom and responsibility, men and woman, Man and God. It used to be like this in the West too, though differently I grant.

This gets to the heart of what I dislike about my own culture. No, not that we have the freedom to criticise and reject the package that those in authority establish for us to understand life and the universe by. On the contrary, I love and adore this freedom. This is why I could never be a Muslim incidentally- since at heart in so many ways I'm wild and anarchic. Just as I hate telling others what to do, I resent receiving commands and instructions I'm not allowed to question.

What I object to about my culture is its lack of any deeply felt set of ideas that can enable people to feel they're part of a transcendent, unified community - and not just individuals set adrift with their friends and families only, in a desparate drive to accumulate wealth and pleasurable experiences for no reason other than that accumulation.

Much can be argued against Islam being such a culture. But it is more of one than ours is. And I'm sure this is why Muslims are so much more friendly to strangers, which they certainly seem to be. A cynic might want to add they're like this only so they call sell us their carpets and other produce, but in my experience it goes deeper than that. It has to do with the fact that as individuals they feel their connection with other individuals more keenly than we do. This I'm sure is because their egos are less well fortified and demarcated. Their belief system, and cultural practice perpetually grounds them as individuals in the context of the larger world and universe. Obviously, Islam is not the only belief system to do this. Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and other traditional systems of collectivist, inter-relational thought do the same - in their own particular ways. But ours does this significantly less so, and that is our sadness. Herein lies our inner emptiness, since as the existentialists correctly say the life of the self is only felt to be truly real, truly vivid, truly substantial in its genuine heartfelt interations with others. The Cartesian identity we've been persuaded to assume, that disemebodied phantom in the mind, which equates subjective thought with ultimate reality, can only lead us away from each other to a panoply of variously diverging privatised mythologies of our own devising. Yes, we can forge workable connections with each other, one universe to another, and we do so; but our unique reliance on linguistic utterances and humour to do so, our energetic search for people with similar interests and ideas, reveals that the connection is something that always has to be fought for, might at any time be lost and isn't just there as a de facto fact.

But that's me being hard on the West. I exclude everything that's wonderful about the utterly vast possibilites for tremendous good our highly individualistic culture allows for. It seems, in our current world system, we're faced with a choice between two options, both of which are imperfect, both of which cry out for synthesis with the other, both of which wait to be surpassed. On the one hand you have, putting it simply, coherence and belonging without individual freedom of behaviour and thought. On the other you have this in reverse.

Anyway, the instincts of defence for my intellectual tradition were raised when I read an article in the academic manual about Muhammad. At the end of this informative, albeit Islamically nuanced, piece about his life, it listed as a study aid a set of questions about what had been written. One question explored the possibility that Muhammad is the greatest man that's ever lived. But whereas in the west, if this question were asked at all, we'd ask something like 'Do you think Muhammad is the greatest man who's ever lived. If so, why?', this question leapt a step and just wanted to know 'Why is Muhammad the greatest man who's ever lived?' In that simple difference, I felt, lay so much about what differentiates us.

In Islam there is a presumption that the universe just is the way it is. Within that, rationality wants to understand how it's the way it is. Asking why might be perilous, however. You'd be examining God's motives which could question the whole construction. In the West we basically haven't got a clue. We just like to ask questions. Muslims know where they are and who they are, even though they might be living in a dream world. We don't know where we are, or even who we are, and satisfy ourselves with the consolation, conceivably very well grounded, that we're the less deceived. Whether that satisfaction is worth the disadvantages of a deracinated, fragmented collective psyche, however, is debatable. Especially since we might be wrong about the non-existence of transcendent truth, even if we're right to question, as I'm sure we are, the certain answers of Islam.

Morality and a Fine View

Aaron and Ahmed took me up a hill to their house for tea and some great sunset views over their sacred land. The women in Lattakia are much less veiled. It was nice to get a smile out of their sister.

Ahmed is soon to get married. He's redecorating his house and saving up. This reminded me of a conversation I had with a man in the ruins of Palmyra. He asked me if I was married. I get this question quite often in the Middle East. I said I wasn't and added for good measure that I didn't have a girlfriend either. I tried to carry this off with dignity, alluding with a chuckle to the liberating advantages singleness brings when contrasted with the formulaic template of togetherness. He smiled, so I think he understood. But who knows, maybe he thought these advantages included lots of free-spirited sex and intimacy with a fulsome repertoire of ladies, in which case he was very much mistaken.

The man at Palmyra was also unmarried. But in his case, from what I could gather, no personal difficulties with forming lasting relationships lay behind his status. I suspect there'd be a higher chance of encountering a Martian in the Islamic world than a man who, Morrisey style, would admit to existential difficulties with getting hitched. For one, this would be far too unmentionably unmacho. For another, it would perilously imply women had a real say in the type of personality they got together with. Finally it would imply, related to this, that matchmaking is a question of free choice, not a matter for parents and families and cool considerations of financial viability.

When I asked him why he wasn't married his response was simple, dramatic and very funny. His English wasn't great, so he mimed with his hands. He said that in England all you have to do, as a man, is buy a ring for your wife's finger (and he mimed putting a ring on his finger). But here, in Syria, you have to buy a ring for most of her fingers, and not just that but also bracelets and necklaces and heaven knows what else. I understood him perfectly and we laughed together against the rock, beneath the sun.

Ahmed wanted to talk about relationships and love in the West. Certainly I was interested to hear a Syrian perspective on the issue. However much his theology might be considered free spirited or novel, this cannot be said for his sexual morality, though when he spoke there was no malice or distemper in his bearing; nothing of that stone age thunderousness one typically associates with the religiously intolerant.

More than anything else it was innocence I discerned. I've seen this quite alot here. In many ways it's rather charming. Sexuality is strikingly absent in the Islamic sphere, in public anyway. This is no shattering revelation. Obviously, I sense this so much, however, because I come from the West. From a West which parades sexuality before the face of the world as if it's the Holy Grail itself, self-sprung from concealment, liberally presented triumphantly for all.

There seems to be two reasons for our Western sexual obsessions. Firstly, we're trying to reclaim sexuality as an integral part of what it means to be human, after having lived through centuries of sex slander under the regimen of shy and brittle neo-platonists, gentlemen we've revered as priests of a God who's always favoured spirit far above matter, despite the fact he's gone to the trouble to create matter. Secondly, we're being exploited by a media and advertising industry that knows all-too-well, at least as much as the priests did, that sex is something we're far from indifferent to, something therefore they'd do well to focus on as they manipulate us into harbouring desires and fascinations for products of the capitalist system that, left to our own devices, we might see through as cheap, tacky and crass, or at the very least not see as the objects of our true hearts desires which we're brainwashed into thinking they are.

Ahmed doesn't believe in sex before marriage. As a twenty two year old I suspect this hasn't been much of a burden for him, especially now that he's marrying soon. I wonder if he lived to be 36 and unmarried, he'd think the same way. That's an interesting thing, isn't it, about the no sex before marriage ruling. In the past people always married young so it was never much of a problem. Obviously, though, since 'God's law' is written in stone, it doesn't make the slightest difference that people now marry later and later, or that life itself changes and is not stone.

Adultery, as well as sex before marriage, is also horrible to Ahmed. He said God will punish it. That it is the worst thing you can do. I suspected he was being rhetorical. I hoped so anyway. Actually, I don't know if adultery is legal in Syria, in the eyes of the secular state. One thinks somehow it should be, if you're thinking in a secular way. But clearly it's unacceptable on the Islamic street. I told him that adultery isn't a crime in the West, though I wished I could tell him when it was legalised, but I didn't know. I didn't defend adultery. My opposition to adultery, and to infidelity for the unmarried, is simply based on the fact that it constitutes a lie, that it's deceitful. People in monogamous relationships say to each other that they'lll be faithful to each other, and they expect that from each other too; or at least they expect it from the other if not from themselves. If they're not going to be faithful, why did they say they would be in the first place.

Certainly I didn't agree that God punishes adultery. I don't understand God as a punisher. Mankind is the punisher, not God. Nature is the punisher, not God. Call it Karma if you will. Karma is the punisher. I agree with the Buddhists in this. But God, who obviously cannot be hurt by anything we do to him, operates outside of the system of retalliation. Moreover, it was to put an end to punishment, according to my theology, that God came to get punished on the cross.

Even though Ahmed had just said that nothing was worse than adultery, he revised his opinion, as I suspected he might, when I asked him about homosexuality. This now became the ultimately bad thing.

What could I say? I could have tried to rile him by referring to what I'd heard, correctly or incorrectly, that homosexuality is not as rare in the Islamic world as one might expect it to be, given the severity of the prohibitions against it. But I was enjoying my tea and their hospitality and didn't want to generate bad vibes. All I really said by way of trying to forge a connection was that I didn't really understand homosexuality. Which is true, I don't.

Ahmed wanted me to stay longer but I was tired. It was fascinating talking to him but I needed to be alone, so I waited for a bus to drive me back the 30km to Lattakia at an absurdly excessive speed.

Morshedi near Lattakia

My train to Lattakia was the first I'd taken since travelling in Bulgaria between Koprivshtsitsa and Veliko Tarnovo. This bus-heavy trajectory had never been my choice but was a reflection of the greater availability of buses in these regions.

So I was looking forward to standing up again and walking around on my means of transport. Hopefully, if the train was better than the Bulgarian one, I'd go to the buffet for a coffee and look longingly, as I like to, over land disappearing behind me. I'd read that the views between Aleppo and Lattakia are really good so this further stoked my anticipation.

Actually, although I found and sat in the buffet, and drank two typically thick coffees, I didn't pay much attention to the views. Instead I spent my time in the immoderately joyful company of Amon Fawsley. I noticed him shortly after sitting down in the buffet, waving me over. Almost from the beginning he interweaved hearty laughter into his discourse - the non-sardonic, golden type that speaks of other realms and warms the heart and provokes similar laughter from others. From me anyway.

A student of law in Aleppo he was on his way home to his village in the hills surrounding Lattakia. He played me a song, quite a trashy one, on his mobile phone. I couldn't help being impressed. My phone is three years old and can do nothing fancy except take uselessly poor pictures. He'd been reading about his studies when I joined him. He has to study legal terminology in English, which I found pretty impressive. He showed me his list of political definitions for concepts such as 'democracy' and 'absolutism', and 'socialism'. Fairly good I thought, accurate, well-balanced, not biased as I expected them to be. Before long he invited me to see his village, even to stay the night if I wanted. I thought why the hell not but told him I wanted to settle into a hotel first. His English wasn't that great but good enough. If all else failed he would revert to his charming catchphrase, uttered with a broad smile: 'I have no money, I have no land, I have no wife, but I have a beautiful life.' I don't know if this is original to him, but I thought it was brilliant. Is this what Alawi Shia Muslims are like, I wondered. Transcendentally happy, all the time. But when I asked him if he was Shia, he shrugged me off amiably and mysteriously said 'only Muslim'. Intriguing.

Eventually I found a suitable hostel run by a Tintin lover called Muhammad. He had a big map on his wall of the expanse of the Islamic world, which I thought conveyed an indeterminate degree of pride in his religion. For the first time on this trip I accepted the offer of a mattress on a roof, and after deflecting his entreaties to visit Saladin's castle made my way to Amon's village.

When I arrived I was treated to tea and a great meal with his extremely hospitable family, sitting under a tree in his garden. So it transpired, all the people in the village are members of his family. But this was not the only strange thing, since the whole village appeared to embrace the same religion too, one I'd never heard of before and have since found no reference to on the internet. I'd define it as a twentieth century, localised, Syrian offshoot of Shia Islam, but that's me categorising. An extremely young revelation, it has yet to find a written expression, so only lives in the oral memories and transmissions of those who personally knew the religion's central figures. The impression I was given, and the one I went away with, was that I was a witness to a religion in a similar phase of incohate development that Christianity went through before the first gospels were compiled.

I'll try and summarise it, as accurately as I can. Amon's father knew the most but his brother, Ahmed, whose English was very good, conveyed the details. They call themselves 'Morshedi' and accept the basic truth of Islam, that Muhammad was sent by God. Within that broad stance, like other shia they also believe that Ali, the fourth Caliph, was a wonderful man, far more than the Caliphs that preceded or followed him. This is where the similarities with Islam end, however.

A major point of departure is over the question of Jesus. It is a regrettably unknown fact that all Muslims accept the providential role of Jesus Christ. But although Muslims will say he was a great prophet, was born of a Virgin, and will return again to the world before the last Judgement, Muslims have always carved a deep line in the sand between themselves and Christians by insisting that Jesus was not divine, that he did not die on the cross, and so in consequence did not rise from the dead.

Ahmed, however, told me that Jesus was the Son of God. Moreover, he did indeed die in the manner Christian tradition says he did. He was right to think that by saying this he would pique my interest. I wondered if he meant he was uniquely divine, as the orthodox say, or divine in a sense that we are all divine, or at least potentially divine, as does panentheism and the New Age. The latter, so he told me, though one must always wonder to what extent western, abstruse theological categories hold water in the Levant. With one stroke he dismantled the traditional Muslim insistence (shared by Judaism) that an unbridgeable abyss separates man and God. Perhaps this was why these Morshedi are all such jolly splendid people. They are not ashamed to revel in their own divinity!

So I asked about the Resurrection, something I tend to think is a crucial article of the faith if the remarkable claims of the uniqueness of the Christian message are to be credited. Yes, this happened too. Really I wondered? I was sceptical. There was something about his spiritualised way of speaking that made me wonder if he was thinking of a spiritual resurrection, in the manner perhaps of the Gnostics.

Yes, I was right. Although I had to struggle to get Ahmed to see the difference between a physical and a spiritual resurrection, he eventually clarified that, yes, Jesus' physical body did not rise from the dead, but only his soul. But what did that matter he maintained? It's the soul that counts, so he said. All of us are eternal and will live on after we die and lose our physical containers. Fair enough, and all well and good, and perhaps he's right, but I was glad to clarify that Morshedi disagrees with orthodox Christian thought on the events of the third day. But never before had I heard Muslims agreeing as much as these did with Christianity.

For Muslims is what they are, at least in their own understanding, whatever other Muslims might think. Ahmed teasingly reproved me for Christians' failure to accept Muhammad as a prophet, as if it was my fault, which I found very funny. He told me how Jesus had prophesied the coming of Muhammad. I told him this was a matter of Muslim opinion, not something that Christians believe, otherwise they'd be Muslims. I think he may have taken the point, but if he did he didn't do so enthusiastically. He was such a lovely man I couldn't get frustrated with his unwillingness to accept that Christians don't accept Muslim accounts of the Christian revelation, as expressed in the Koran; but surely this is vital if Muslims are to understand Christians and do more than just talk at them, however graciously.

Seeking common ground, as is my wont, I asked about Abraham's son Ishmael, the alleged spiritual and ethnic ancestor of the Arabs. He didn't know that he plays a minor role in Genesis, as someone blessed by God who then disappears from a biblical story which then focuses only on the children of his half-brother, Isaac. I wanted to edge towards my tentative hypothesis that whereas the Bible is a book about and for Isaac's children (at least the Old Testament), the Koran, though it refers in some depth to the history of Isaac's children (through Jacob), is intended for Ishmael's, and that through this understanding of the intended readership of the two books, harmony and mutual respect and comprehension between the Abrahamic religions might be established. He seemed to go, very intrigued, with the idea but didn't see, I think, its holistic, hopefully curative consequences.

Morshedi, a specifically Syrian, home grown development, has no more than 400,000 followers. It has had three principal spokesmen. The first was born in 1922 or 1923, I forget. His role was to prepare the way for the second, the most important figure, whose teaching the third individual spent his life promoting among his followers in Northern Syria. Alas, I cannot tell you their names because I can’t remember them and Ahmed said they were too sacred to write down. Both the first and second gentlemen were killed by the Syrian Government, something which didn’t upset Ahmed at all. Indeed, he was keen to stress that Morshedi has no argument with the Government and doesn’t involve itself in politics at all. I’d wondered whether this might be because they live in the prosperous Alawi area of Syria and so share the same Shia background as the Government, but I let that one lie. The second man began preaching as a twenty two year old in the early 50s but could only preach for two years before he was killed by the Government. The third man took up the mantle and lived until 1997, when he mysteriously disappeared. They are willing to accept that he died but say that they don’t know what happened to him.

The message of Morshedi struck me as very agreeable. I hope I get it right. They believe that all people who have good hearts and are loving towards their fellow men are Sons of God. As for the rest these are to be respected and honoured and never mistreated. So wonderfully, they really seem to have transcended the age-old human fascination with dividing people up into intrinsically good and intrinsically bad factions, a fascination we too often maniacally cling to; as well as to have embraced Jesus’ noble doctrine of the love of enemies in the face of persecution. Still, perhaps it helps them specifically that they don’t face persecution, possibly because of their beneficent, tolerant feelings towards others, if not their lack of interest in politics. As to why gentleman one and gentleman two were killed by the authorities, however, this was not explained.

I still wasn’t exactly clear what they thought about Jesus, particularly in terms of the Second Coming. And here things get really strange, as well as divergent not only from Christianity but from Islam. Apparently, although Muslims believe that Jesus is to return, he is to do so not in Jerusalem but in Damascus, and not just anywhere in Damascus but through the ‘Jesus Minaret’ on the south eastern corner of the Great Ummayad Mosque. Curious as such an understanding may be, at least Muslims believe, however, that Jesus is to return literally, in the same physical form he embodied when he was taken up into heaven to escape crucifixion.

Morshedi disagrees with Muslims on both counts. Not in Damascus was Jesus fated to return but rather to their very own sacred region of Lattakia. And not in the same physical form either but in the body of another man (the physical body is not that important in Moshedi, after all). And finally - maybe you’ve guessed this - not in the future is this to happen, but it already has. Sure enough, in the person of gentleman number two! So much for his return being seen by every eye, as the New Testament suggests, but anyway.

One thing, however, Moshedi does agree with Islam about. When Jesus returns (or rather when he did) his role is/was to convert Christians to Islam (or in this case to Morshedi). So there it was all wrapped up and revealed. Ahmed wanted to convert me - a Christian obviously, since I was European - to his super new brand of Islam, and claiming Jesus’ Second Coming for their own was a central tactic in his plan. Ingenious, Sherlock.

Oh well, I shouldn’t be cynical. It’s normal for religions that aren’t Jewish to seek converts so this is hardly a crime; obviously, it was no noxious creed they wanted me to join. They don’t even demand much of your time in ritual worship. Not only do Morshedi Muslims have no mosques, they only gather for collective worship once a year in specially constructed buildings. I'm presuming this is because they have a highly interiorised, direct understanding of God’s relationship with the individual. And when they do gather, they engage in something that has been called a ‘festival of sweets’. I imagine this involves some kind of ritual enjoyment of Syria’s marvellous delicacies, but now I’m only speculating.

Armenians in Aleppo

Apart from the souq, Aleppo has an enormous castle, or the ruins of one, sat on the top of a large mound of earth in the centre of the old city, the views from which reminded me very much of Cairo.

One evening with Alfredo, I managed to talk to some French girls who were working with him temporarily. One of them was really gorgeous, though I'm sure I found her more gorgeous than I normally would. If I'd met her in the West, she'd have been only one of a number of lavish ladies - vivid of speech, alluring in appearance - that I might typically meet. But here, in the land of concealment, where mother nature's daughters are shy, she shone like a shepherd moon, like a spring in the desert, an oasis deep with water, surrounded by high class palm trees. The effect was agreeably hypnotic, while it lasted.

Unfortunately nothing developed between us but it was nice to be remineded that half of the human race existed, and had minds of their own. A pity, though, that these women weren't Arabic. Indeed, I have not spoken to a Middle Eastern women since the school teacher near Kahta in Turkey. If I didn't think this was totally normal for the region I'd think it was bizarre.

As long as they're happy, I tell myself. But happy is not what Alfredo suggested Syrian women were when he told me the suicide rate is high in Syria, especially for women.

I'd decided to go next to Lattakia, on the coast. I told myself I wanted to swim in the sea. I also wanted to see the area that Syria's ruling class (or should I say tribe), the Alawi sect, come from. A particular variant of Shia Islam, they constitute a mere 11% of the population but completely dominate political power in the country and have most of its wealth. Given that most of the country are Sunni (74%) and would probably, if you asked them, like to have some of that power themselves, the Alawi have a robust reason to ensure their grip on power doesn't falter. Not only might they lose their pre-eminence if things like democracy had a say, they might face vengeance and reprisals if their hegemony were eroded. Nothing like a solid dose of fear to make the ruling classses twist the knife one last time.

In an internet cafe which like so many boasted computers that intermittently crash because of power cuts, I met an Armenian twenty year old guy called Aram, who worked in the cafe. While we waited for the power to return, he walked me to the station and helped me buy my train ticket to Lattakia. He told me that there are 40,000 Armenians in Aleppo. That sounds like alot but its only 2.1% of Aleppo's population of 1.9 million. He told me, gloomily, that he didn't like the Arabs. Remembering Stephen's good relations with the Assyrians, I asked him if they were any better. Alas, they weren't. The Kurds?....actually they're ok. But didn't the Kurds kill your ancestors I innocently asked, not wanting to turn him into a Kurd basher. Well, ok, yeah, but the Turks (who he hated most of all) were to blame since they told the Kurds to kill the Armenians and to take their land. Through all this chatter I hadn't noticed the tattoo on his arm which said 'Jesus' in bold Gothic font. Are you a Christian I asked, by which I meant are you devout. No, he chuckled, I wear it to annoy the Arabs.

While we waited outside another internet cafe run by his Armenian friend - a cafe also suffering from power failure - I finally noticed the swastica hung around his neck. Wondering, hopefully, if he might possibly be an appreciator of ancient Indian philosopy, I asked him why he was wearing it. Because Hitler was a good man who knew what should be done with the Jews, he said. And what was that, I asked. He killed them 'one by one'. Apparently, he believes (as do many so it seems) that the 11 million Jews of the world control the wealth of the planet's six billion. Curiously enough, however, he later expressed a desire to go to Israel. Examining him on this apparent inconsistency, he said it was fine if the Jews were confined to their own country; it's only a problem if they're elsewhere. If this counted for a form of Zionism (does it?) its a pretty strange form, surely.

Standing up for my own and most people's aversion to the corporal from Linz, I told him that Hitler was an evil man and not anybody I thought anyone should admire. Possibly he was disarmed by the reasonable discursive tone I adopted. In any case, he didn't seem eager to fight for his hero, only pointing at some graffiti on the wall that said 'Hitler rules' (or something like that) next to a scrawled swastica. He said Hitler was aware of racial issues, implying that this was good. I conceded his point that Hitler was very race conscious but added that he was so in a diabolical way that, in fact, had the effect of rendering the whole question of race disreputable and too explosive to be mentioned. So in the long run, was he really a servant of race consciousness? I wasn't implying that race consciousness is good. In fact I find it morally neutral but think that it can be fascinating and insightfula topic, if your heart is a good one. But since Hitler any innocence it might have possessed has been rendered almost inaccessible, in popular western discourse anyway.

He seemed perplexed that I didn't seem to hate anybody, any ethnic group. The feeling of incomprehension was not reciprocated. I find it very easy, given the genocide and the population transfers, to understand why Armenians hate the children of their persecutors, even though I see no nobility in it. I partially explained my tolerant attitudes by saying I'm an Englishman and that we have no natural, serious enemies, never having been invaded, deported or wiped out by another people, being instead a dominant race whose role it has been to give others reasons to hate us. A curious advantage of being a top dog but surely an advantage nevertheless. What we have entertained have been insufferably pompous attitudes of condescending superiority. But we have never, I think, really hated the peoples over whom we have ruled becasue we've had no reason to.

I asked him if he knew Gurdjieff, a fellow Armenian. He hadn't so I told him, patronisingly but with conviction, that he would be a far better man to get enthusiastic about than Hitler. And of course he was Armenian too, so he could conjoin his patriotism with an esteem for his amazing thought too.

The internet cafe I eventually was able to use was attached to an Armenian youth centre, with sports and other recreational facilities. Everything about the place looked affluent. The Armenians also have their own schools and have carved out quite a comfotable niche for themselves. Why was this I asked Aram. Because, he said, unlike the Arabs, Armenians use their heads. Hmmm I thought, but let the matter lie.

He seemed keen to talk further so later we went for some pizza and then for a couple of beers during happy hour at the hyper air-conditioned Sheraton Hotel. Walking in from the heat is an exciting experience, as your body rapidly adjusts to the enveloping wall of cold air. Aram used to be a barman at the Sheraton's 'English bar'. We were also joined by another of his Armenian friends, Magar, who works for an auditing company. The money he said was rubbish, but compared to others he was doing ok. Top jobs in Syria apparently provide you with 400 dollars a month, no more.

We were isolated at the bar and it seemed safe to discuss politics, and they were happy to, though Magar looked around suspiciously at one moment when some people walked behind us.

Magar told me about a Finnish anarchist he'd once befriended in Aleppo who had gone around spray painting on pictures of the President. Worried that the police might associate him with this person's crimes, he confessed that he'd known him to an agent who was a vague acquaintance that he'd known him, but said that he'd only spoken with him and wasn't involved. He presumed the police had been watching him in the first place and he wanted to pre-emptively clear his name. I asked him about the political prison near Palmyra, and he told me about the torture equipment kept there, about one particular device used for stretching the back.

Then Aram said that he expected to be asked by the police the following day what he'd been saying to me. Until now, I'd suspected that I might have been followed, but they put all my doubts to rest. Presuming that their self-preservation instincts would assist them to be quiet, I told them when we spoke about Israel that I'd been there three times. I said that in a demonstrative hush-hushing gesture that I hoped was dramatic. They were shocked and laughed, yet nonetheless seemed impressed. Technically, I suppose, my being in Syria was illegal; though since nobody had asked me if I'd ever been to Israel I hadn't had to lie. They were even more shocked, however, when I told them I'd met someone in a bookshop living in Syria who actually went to Israel fairly often on a second passport by flying out to Greece first.

We exchanged emails and Aram said he'd write to me about what the Police said to him if they approached him, but I haven't heard anything yet. Hopefully, the allure of his beloved computer games have clouded his memory.

Islam with Alfredo

Alfredo knows alot about Islamic law. Like many law books, the one on his table initially looked appealing but after a page or two turned out to be ladened with the same rarified, stultifiying, inhumane jargon one might find in the legal language games of the West. What difference must there really be between the two spheres of Law I wondered.

Ok, in the West you don't get your hand chooped off for stealing, nor do public executions happen, as they still do in Saudi Arabia. In the West, thank God, you can even publically defy the bearded one in the sky, or even deny he exists, without losing your stride or your life. But not so long ago in the West you could be hanged for stealing an apple, so let's not rest too comfortably on our laurels.

In both systems of law the same sense of the sovereignty of an abstract, impersonal, inhumane 'other' is noted. In both systems the Law is a God, second only to the uber-God of all Gods, Money. But don't think I'm an antinomian anarchist, please. In both systems this Law is necessary because human beings (that would be you and I) cannot be trusted to live together, without our egos, in a blissful communion of illimitable love. The Law indeed is an old and sorry story. St.Paul's best efforts to transport us beyond its crushing vigour have apparently failed. Now we seem destined to languish forever, in varying degrees of unquestioning self-righteousness, in the arms of its accusatory zeal. And now, as we get rid of God, we don't even have the counter-weight of divinely instituted mercy to restrain the dark rapacity of dark hearts. A case in point is the so called 'criminal record'. Even though, granted, alot of our punishments are gentler than they were, because of this record, this branding on your soul, after you have been punished, you continue to be punished for a possibly permanent period of time thereafter, unless your conviction is deemed to be 'spent'. Even if it is 'spent', however, your past misdemeanour remains a source of shame you had better keep quiet about. Nobody will be impressed very much if you refer to your past crime, your own guilt, as a reason to be forgiving towards another, on the principle that you too are not 'without sin', as Jesus would put it, and so are not entitled to throw stones.

In case you're wondering, no, I don't have a criminal record. But so what if I did? Well, actually quite alot what, and that's the problem. That's what I'm saying. The unoffical, implicit stigma of the record hangs around like a stain long after the formal operations of state revenge have been exacted and laid to rest.

Probably I could have made quite a good lawyer. My fastidious, categorising mind, might have done well, picking over the bodies of the accused. If I'd become a lawyer, who knows, I might even be earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year by now. Ample money then to finance proper travelling, provided of course I had the energy to do interesting things with my miniscule allowances of holiday.

Actually, despite what I say, I've always found the law interesting, as a theoretical entity, anyway - even though the dead, flattening discourse it wraps itself up in always does its best to shoo me off to more fertile realms.

So I asked Alfredo about Sharia law. Sharia law is often in our newspapers. Its implementation in a state, one might want to say, is the defining characteristic of an Islamist state, as opposed to a state (such as Turkey for example) in which the prevailing cultural consensus is Islamic but which bases itself on a less stringent, less exactling interpretation of Islamic law, usually combined with legal traditions from the non-Islamic world. According to Wikipedia (the possibly trustworthy) unambiguously Sharia states comprise only Saudi Arabia and Iran, though Afghanistan, Libya and Sudan come pretty close. The rest of the Islamic world seems to operate what it calls a 'dual system', which separates the realm of the religious from the secular and has separate courts for each.

The basic question I wanted to put to Alfredo was whether you can dispense with Sharia law on the basis of the Koran, whether you can be a non-Sharia Muslim, or a non-Sharia Islamic state while still being loyal to the Koran?

Obviously, I am no expert. Alfredo basically said you couldn't and no doubt he would have many a Muslim applauding him. What he said was that the Five Pillars of Islam (Praying 5 times a day, giving money to the poor, going to Mecca, believing Muhammad is the Prophet of God, and fasting during Ramadam) are rooted in the Koran. Well, that indeed is no doubt true, but is the Koran identical with Sharia, does the Koran encapsulate the fulness of Sharia? One thinks not. And Wikipedia seems to agree:

'There is no strictly static codified set of laws of sharia. Sharia is more of a system of devising laws, based on the Qur'an (the religious text of Islam), hadith (sayings of Muhammad), ijma, qiyas and centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent.'

I won't go into the details of these exotic sounding words, about which I know little. But it seems to back up what I thought about how there has been much besides the Koran that has determined Sharia. One might want to call that simply history or culture or tradition, the unfolding of minds thinking about legal matters over many centuries, in various contexts.

Why was I thinking along these lines? Because to me, when I think about the Five Pillars of Islam (which are clearly, specifically Koranic) I think: Hmmmm, well, that doesn't sound too harsh, too exacting does it; but that when I think about the minutae of Sharia as an extended regimen, I go a bit giddy. And in my giddiness I think 'Phew, is all this really necessary, is all this really what Muhammad wanted? Are we sure?'

I am not a Muslim and as such you would be right to think this is 'none of my business', as the cliche goes. But the desire to live in a harmonious world in which all people love each other, don't judge one another, and don't heap extraneous burdens on one another under the liberal blessedness of the Sun - this I consider most certainly to be my business. That desire is my business, and I'm not sure why it shouldn't be other people's business too.

Obviously, if people want to live under Sharia and to know from it what they should do in multiple spheres in the privacy of their self-relations and their relations with others, this is their right and they surely have the freedom to do so. Lots of people, after all, join the army and a myriad of non-Islamic cults to get the same existential certainties against the gaping rigours of the void. But surely, it's something else to suppose, if you don't actually want to live like this, that you have to live like this because the creator of the Universe said so unambiguously through both his Archangel Gabriel and human articulator, Muhammad. If you think the latter, it becomes rather important, I would think, to be certain that Sharia is Koranic, and only Koranic, because the Koran is the only unambiguous text detailing that direct, monumental divine message. After all, even the Hadith, the life example and words of the Prophet, are open to interpetations. And additionally, how a man lived hundred of years ago is not the same as the voice of God, I am supposing. The Koran, after all, so it is believed, is the actual word of God, passively received by the mind of Muhammad, undoctored by any contributing, moulding shaping input on his part. Can the same, one might ask, be said for his behaviour?

You would not be misguided if you discerned echoes in my thinking of the Protestant cast of mind in the context of the Christian revelation. That too was rooted in the wonderment: Is all this tradition really what Jesus was about? They concluded no, and I was wondering with Alfredo whether a similar protesting, reforming turn of mind might be actionable within the broad framework of Islam as laid down in the Koran.

Of course, in a broad sense I don't care that much about this personally, since I'm not a Muslim. Alfredo, it seemed, cared even less, preferring to angle for a basic deconstruction of Islamic law altogether, along with the entirety of the religion itself. Such one would expect from an atheist after all, so there's no surprise there.

My concern, actually, is rooted in a curiosity to see if it's possible to reassure Muslims that compromise or negotiation with the 'forms of life' as Wittgenstein would put it, of the non-Islamic world, be that Eastern or Western, is not incompatible with their religion as understood by the Koran. It is after all tricky to liberate people from restrictive forms of life (if indeed they would like to be liberated, and therein may lie the rub) by criticising the foundational axiom -namely God - that underlies the religion that itself enshrines those forms of life. That has been the policy of the essentially materialistic influenecs that have entered the world of Islam in the past few hundred years. These were brought first by the West in its post 'Enlightenment' expansionist bossiness, then later from within the Muslim mind itself they were reproduced, in the secularist-nationalist, even communist-atheistic manifestations of the twentieth century.

I say it's tricky, of course, becuse it gets the believers backs up, since they feel, not without reason, that the most precious thing in their emotional life, namely God, is being marginalised if not less equivocably trashed. And the reaction to that is fundamentalism and the ossification of the mind in defensive forms of rigidity and fear, masquerading as condemnation of the 'other', undertaken in a spirit of self-preservation, of everything except the simplest, most foundational interpretations of Islam. From the earliest days of Wahhabism to contemporary Al-Quaeda, after all, what is fundamentalism if divorced from its fear of the West. I'm not sure that there is such a fundamentalism.

It would be less tricky to reconcile the Islamic mind to expansiveness and a freer interpretation of sanctioned behaviour if the God of Islam is not attacked at all, if one can present the idea that God never wanted all this restrictiveness in the first place. I'm not saying that this is either easy or that it can be done, I am just wondering if it can be done. And if Sharia is indeed extra-Koranic, or post-Koranic, then to my mind this would suggest that it would be more possible than it would otherwise be.

I suppose, broadly, what I think about Islam should be understood in the context of my globalist concern to attempt, however forlornly and hopelessly this may be, to somehow understand what the hell humanity in its relation to transcendent reality has been up to in the past three to four thousand years. I have various ideas, touching on Ancient Israel, Greek philosophy and the meditative spirtualities of the non-Islamic east, and the Christian orthodox and heretical churches. Particularly interesting to me is the significance of the so-called 'Axial Age' of the middle of the first millenium BC, when, as Karen Armstrong and others say, so much changed in the mental, spiritual life of humanity. My suspicion is that the aeon that was then introduced is crumbling all around us today and that this might explain the confusions and disparate, apparently incompatible ideologies of the contemporary world. But until now I've never really thought much about Islam and how it fits in with my working hypothesis.

Of course, it is a relatively very young religion (though you wouldn't catch a devout Muslim saying that, since he'd say Islam is the restoration of the pure Abrahamic faith that Judaism and Christainity were degenerations from). Its only 1,400 years old, after all.

Everything I write is not intended to offend Muslims. But I am interestd in what I read recently about the connection Islam may have with our glistening friend the Moon. Yes, the Moon, the spherical eye of beautiful, solicitous eeiriness that bedecks our sky by night. For one, Islam keeps a lunar calender, as does Judaism for that matter. Maybe they are both somehow lunar. But what I read more than this (and of course what I read could be wrong?) is that the Arabs, including Muhammad, that embraced Islam were formerly Moon worshippers, that the name of their God was 'Al-ilah' (similar to Allah) and that the enjoined practices of that Moon religion bear a striking resemblance to the Five Pillars of Islam. This is either wrong or it is right.

Beyond that I think about Ishmael, the older son of Abraham and the spiritual, if not literal ancestor of the Arabs. Jews and Muslims disagree starkly about who Abraham's most significant son was. Jews say it was Isaac, Muslims Ishamel. Muslims say that Abraham went with Ishamael to Mecca and blessed and made sacred the Kaaba, the rock that is now the most sacred shrine of Islam's most sacred city. Jews don't mention this in their Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament and which they call the Tannakh. This book, in Genesis, writes of Isaac and the promises he received to be a light and a blessing to the world.

What I'm thinking is why can't both accounts be true, even though they're different. Abraham got around, after all, he lived a long time. After all, Genesis is clear that Ishmael was not a bad egg. He himself gets a blessing, even though its not as good as the one that Isaac gets (well, the Bible is a Hebrew text after all).

Ultimately in a way I agree with Alfredo, and with John Lennon: it would be good to see the back of religion, though my argumentation would be different. I'd meditate on the ethical humiliations it has so often wrought on God's sacredness by making him so often an exquisitely partial, bigoted old man in the sky; on the ways in which it has been, yes, and still is far too often, a justification for cruelty and hatred, let alone the prohibiting of the free, joyful life beneath the Sun. But I'm not persuaded the Godlessness is either intellectually viable (God may well exist) or wise (Think Stalin, think Mao, think the tyranny of the machines).

To me it is precisely because God exists that religion is merely temporary. Religion is but a bridge across an abyss, as I have written before. And who needs the bridge when you've got to the other side, or if God has got to yours.

If you're a spy, I hope you find this interesting

When I was in Alfredo's room, which he keeps ice cool in a delightful manner, I showed him how to set up a blog, and warned him, as one must, of how temperamental Blogger can be with its fonts. Later Alfredo would tell me I could write about our chats but to keep his identity secret, since he was feeling a bit paranoid.

I'd earlier told Peter he could email me if he wanted. He worried the internet police would be able to trace him through his email. He hadn't heard of the possibility of calling yourself dirtydrunkbananas@yahoo.com or something like that. He was excited to be enlightened. Still, I told him I didn't know how determined the snoopers would be, whether they'd go to the trouble of asking internet cafe managers who'd been using a specific computer at a particular time.

Maybe they're exaggerating. Or maybe they're not.

Was I having a Bath?

Between my first and second meeting with Alfredo something in the Arabian air did something to my mind. Something which made me do something I'd definitely never do in the Western World - buy a dress, not for daughter, mother, sister or girlfriend, but for myself.

Of course I'm being unfair. Only teasing, my Lord. Whilst it actually was is a 'dish dasha'. I was struck my the sumptious, creamy colour of the proffered item, paraded under my nose by a smiling purveyor of Arabian attire. A 'V-neck' single body garment, some have full length arms, some don't, stopping at the bicep. I had one of the latter. I put it on after having a bath at a Hammam and then wore it for the next two days all around Aleppo. Only some stubborn mud accumulating at its base, and an uncertainty as to how to wash the beast, prevented me from continuing to wear it. Certainly, it made for very comfortable attire in the intense heat of day.

Obviously, after I put it on I felt, self-consciously, like an international superstar and waited to receive suitably impressed smiles and exclamations from the surrounding community. Actually, the reaction was surprisingly muted, though I was glad some nods and smiles were noted. Later Alfredo, when he first saw it on me, shocked and impressed all at once, said people would surely laugh. I said they didn't and he confirmed this himself when we went out later. Previously, he'd only worn his dish dasha at home but now he might change his mind.

Before I'd only ever worn 'dress' arrangements at a fancy dress party in Durham and while kinkily dressing up in an idle moment with a girl. This was the first time I'd publically worn a item at least looking like a dress. Obviously, the fact that in Aleppo about 60% of the men were doing the same had encouraged me. I must say it can be particularly difficult running in this item, and when I caught myself picking up the material around the knees to facilitate movement I awkwardly felt exceptionally female.

Regarding the Hammam, I decided to opt against having the full body massage as I still remembered the pain of being roughly manhandled in Istanbul three years ago. Persuading them I didn't want the massage was pretty hard, nevertheless.

It's of course very agreeable to get wet and washed when you're out and about in the heat and dust of an Arabian day. But Hammams are not as good as Japanese Onsens, which I enjoyed with great dedication last summer. These allow you not only to wash more easily with a greater abundance of soap but to soak in pools of varying temperatures as well. Still, onsens don't have the same tradition of massage attached so they can't compete if a good body pummeling is what you're after. Another central difference is the erstwhile semitic body shame the Hammams defend and that the Japanese innocently know nothing of. In the Turkish baths you must be always covered up beneath the navel by an annoying white sheet that got in my way when I tried to wash.

Alfredo

The second 'dissenting' voice was that of a European living and working in Syria. Since he's not a Syrian, perhaps I shouldn't call him a dissident, but I got the impression he was certain he knew what he was talking about even if he didn't.

Lets call him Alfredo and pretend he's Spanish. Over the course of two days I met up with him three times. Firstly, just moments after saying goodbye to Peter when I decided I'd continue enjoying the upmarket area. A book standing next to his wine caught my eye: Islamic Jurisprudence. He invited me to join him and we chatted with increasing degrees of warmth for the next two hours on a range of topics before walking back to his stunning apartment where I had my first taste of the local liquor, Arak (an aniseed concoction). To be frank, my experience with Peter had made me a bit paranoid. I was worried Alfredo might also be gay and put pressure on me too. But happily this was not the case. He spoke of a lady he'd met and wanted to assure me (as if he thought I didn't know?) that the pleasures and significance of a woman's sexual company can never be underrated.

By the way, I hope its clear I'm not a homophobe. As it happens, I have many gay friends and have always valued them. An inescapably non-coercive individual I've always found it next to impossible to tell anybody how they should or, heaven forbid, must live their life. This trait made me a very poor sub-prefect at school. I never rose any higher than a sub-prefect, gladly. I also controversially worry that it may partially explain my record of failures with women, or some women, those who want a strong, directing hand. It has meant, too, that I've shied away from all ambitions to be a manager or to achieve formal positions of power. It may therefore account for my relatively unimpressive purchasing power. All I'm saying about homosexuals who try to seduce me is that it makes me feel uncomfortable. I think this may be for two reasons. Firstly I find it embarrassing because I have to be a rejector, and I don't like being a rejector. Secondly it means I can't feel I can be as open and affectionate as I might like to be with them, for fear of giving the wrong signal and so encouraging them.

I later met Alfredo the following day when he invited me back to his flat in the afternoon. Being busy we later went out for a very nice meal.

I mainly remember our meetings for the things we spoke about.

He agreed with everything I told him Peter had said about life in Syria. He added that he thought the American assessment of the threat posed by Iran was pretty accurate, because of the insanity of their President, Ahmadinejad, whom he says 'wants the end of the world'. I'd read about this before. Apparently he is trying to provoke the reappearance of the Twelfth Iman, who went into hiding hundreds of years ago. Apocalyptic scenarios must be suitably loud for him to be awoken, so I understand. I reminded him that he's not as powerful as he would like to be and has opposition from within the ruling clerical clique. This didn't impress Alfredo much, though I hope its true that moderate hands can restrain the President. We spoke of 'regime change' in Iran. We agreed that this should never be attempted by the US, or by other outside forces (e.g Israel). Personally, I only think it an appropriate topic because of how unpopular the regime is inside the country. To me, it's clear this has to happen only from inside the country, if it's to happen at all. Obviously, it's up to the Iranian people. The regime is particularly unpopular amongst the young who happen to comprise a disproportionately high degree of the population. Its interestingly unfortunate, however, that because of Ahmadinejad's nationalist breast-beating rhetoric, seeds of a contradictory stance towards the regime have been sown. Yes, the regime is unpopular but the Iranians are a proud and patriotic people (with good reason, given their Persian achievements) and are reviled by the spectre of the interfering, crusading west, an image the President likes to inflame, presumably to some degree at least because it makes him more popular than he would otherwise be.

Regarding the Syrian undercover police, he said there were not as many as there had been under the former President and that we foreigners did not have to fear them. I hope he's right! He also qualified the degree of the threat they pose to Syrians by adding that political debate to an extent is permitted and does go on. The only really off limits issue is criticism of the President himself.

He said things were not as bad in Syria as they might be. If, for example, an Islamist regime, like Iran's or the Taliban, was in power; this much is clear, as we appreciated the alcohol we drank. The economy is also liberalising and this is reflected in the greater affluence of recent years, so he said, pointing at the upmarket cars on the street, which weren't there in the same numbers even five years ago. But he added that the vast majority of the wealth is limited to a very few and that the 'socialism' which is officially a part of the ruling party's platform is much reduced from what it was and that it doesn't do much to help the people. On the other hand, I would later read that some Lebanese come to Syria to take advantage of the better health facilities that can be found here.

Alfredo, like Peter, is an atheist, though in his case a militant one, despite his relaxed amiable bearing. He is also, interestingly, Jewish by ancestry (I wonder, oddly perhaps, if that will make some discredit his political analyses?), though no Zionist. Regarding Judaism, he said it was the best of the Middle Eastern Religions because it inculcates an attitude of questioning and criticising the religious authorities. Protestantism, I think, did this in its early heroic days, but then got slavish about its subservience to a book, when it didn't encourage people, after Newton especially, down a slippery road to the exaltation of human reason over every transcendence. I mentioned the great bits in the Old Testament where David (hardly a heretic!) is arguing with God, from a position that seems close to equality. Moses did the same, though less so. Since I'm a Christian, of a sort, I couldn't agree that Judaism is the best of the religions, though I certainly took his point. Obviously, because of his secular, atheistic mind, all these religious matters mean much less to him than to me.

Intrigued I imagine by my overly mythologising mind, he asked me what my beliefs were. I didn't come across as very sure. Beyond my personal attachment to Jesus, things become pretty vague. An important ingredient though, as I told him, is my qualified respect for Gnosticism, the counter-cultural tradition within Pre-Constantinian Christianity.

He seemed not to know anything about it. This I often distressingly find. The early heresy hunters did a through job, no doubt about it. One very rarely, even in these freethinking times, finds mention of Gnosticism in current religious debates, though it appeared last year when the 'Gospel of Judas' was published. I cut to the chase (to avoid complexity) and described it as an 'anti-wordly' creed, as opposed to a merely 'unworldly' one. Trying to explain the difference I said that while unworldy people might abstain from sex and booze or retreat to a desert, eschewing luxuries, to banish the temptations of the naughty sensuous life or the life of comfortable ease, anti-worldy people actually believe that the entire set up of the physical world itself, the very nature that covers the earth and is the earth, including our bodies and our minds, is fundamentally flawed, and has been flawed ever since its creation. That creation was either the intentionally malign doing of the 'devil' (whom some consider to be the God of Israel, and therefore Islam, since Islam acknowledges the religious pre-Islamic history of the Israelite God), or of a lesser, inferior deity who was led astray by his foolish ignorance and did a botched job.

Aware that this scenario looks decidedly bleak, the Gnostics would try to introduce some optimism. Luckily, when the flawed, or else malign, entity created this physical world he inadvertently allowed some genuine divine essence belonging to the true God above him to get mixed into his creation, where it now exists in a state of dormant self-consciousness in humanity. There it now resides as a 'divine spark' waiting, hoping, to be awoken and reunited with its truly divine reflection in the true heavens (the Aeons) which are safely far higher than and far distant from the counterfeit substitute heaven, wherein the false God (usually called Ialdaboath) resides and from where he manages the enslavement and exploitation of humanity through the ministrations of his army of Archons.

Whatever the orthodox Churches might want you to believe, you can be a Christian and a Gnostic. Well, at least if you suppose, straightforwardly, that to be a Christian means you think Jesus Christ is God and that he is the saviour of mankind. Admittedly, many Gnostics weren't Christians, but many were. The Christians ones believed, just as Christian Gnostics still do, that Jesus is a direct, primary emanation of the true God (the Pleroma - the fullness) and that he came to be the awakener of the divine spark in us all; though, unluckily for many, this spark is far more present and arousable in some than others. By believing in Jesus, one can be liberated from the yoke of the Law and the capricious demands of the standard God of Religion and ones spirit be let loose to freely roam, unrestrained, in the playing fields of ethereal bliss. The physical world is understandably downgraded in importance. Some Gnostics will even argue against sexual reproduction, seeing it as a tool for the propagation of the evil that is matter, the enchaining of spirit within flesh. Like in Buddhism, reincarnation exists and is a kind of hellish punishment that we all must suffer, as long as we're not set free from the physical world. Many have said that Gnosticism is the 'Buddhism of the West'.

Actually, I don't call myself a Gnostic. I can't help loving the physical creation, for all its annoying tragedies and screw ups. Nor do I feel it should be abandoned or ignored or escaped from. On the contrary, I believe the physical world should be understood as the very heart of the focus of God's love. But I do deeply respect the idea that, as Morpheus would say in The Matrix, a film described by some as articulating a Gnostic mythology, 'There is something wrong with the world' in a very fundamental way. I also share Gnosticism's compassion. Gnosticism sees sin and crime, as much as sickness and pain, as equivalent manifestations of the same operation of an evil world. I like the across-the-board, unqualified mercy that this leads to - even in its more exalted expressions to a mercy extended to the very evil deity, the demiurge, who set in motion the whole sorry story of the world in the first place. Gnostics, I'm suspecting, must have been gentle people. Abstracted, whimsical sure, but not persecutors, not pompous self-righteous institutors of religious cruelty. Of course in that it may have helped that they never had power. Maybe they'd have learned to take the physical world more seriously, in dark, oppressive ways, been corrupted, if they and not the orthodox had inherited the Roman Empire.

Descending from these lofty heights, which it was clear didn't interest Alfredo that much, he asked me directly, what kind of a world I wanted to live in. Actually, this flummoxed me. The kind of world I'd like to live in excludes so much of what is featured in this world that it's hard for me, being an inhabitant of this world (at least partially:)), to have a clear or distinct ideas about. I presumed he didn't need to be told that there would be universal love, of all people for all people, and no hatred. I'm a dippy trippy hippy in this regard, it's true. I presumed he wanted specifics. So I said there would be no money, no private property and no trade. That just kind of leapt out of me, without my thinking too much about it. I added that I supposed that made me a communist, though of a strange kind, a pre-Marxist communist, I wanted to say. He said Communism was 'a good idea' by which I presumed he wanted to imply, as he did, that it doesn't work in practice. So I said there has never been real Communism, if one is tempted to think that what happened in Russia and its satellites was Communism (or Communitarianism as I'd prefer), since it obviously wasn't. I made it clear, however, that I'm not a Communist revolutionary. I believe human nature and human consciousness has to change first. People must want not to be greedy and powerful over others. To effect that change is impossible without divine co-operation and involvement. Marx's atheism, therefore, did not bode well for the future.

Sometimes I call myself a Conservative Revolutionary. Only today I thought up the phrase Theocentric Communitarian. But these are slogans, and slogans can kill, as we know. So as God himself said about himself on the mountain, I am what I am, even though I'd add that I'm what I'm not too, in case people are tempted to get literal.

I Forgot to Mention...

I forgot to mention that Peter is an atheist. I thought that was pretty strange, here in the heart of the Muslim world, but he didn't. I got the impression he thought people pretending to be Muslims while being nothing of the sort was fairly standard.

Luckily in Syria there are no religious police as in Iran or Saudia Arabia. This is because Syria, like Turkey, is officially a secular state. This doesn't mean one can feel at ease proclaiming one's atheism, however. Islam, like Christianity when its power was secure, does not possess the imagination sufficient to allow its magnanimous understanding of its tolerance of others to embrace those who think the bearded fellow in the sky is non-existent, if not distinctly malign.

When I say Syria is secular I mean only that the clerics are not in positions of executive power. I don't mean that Islam as a binding ordering cultural force of everyday life is not ever-present. This is even more so in Aleppo, which is one of the most conservative cities in the country, something reflected in the greater number of women in total body covering. Oddly enough, that conservatism didn’t stop Peter telling me it’s the homosexual capital of the country, shortly followed by Deir-Ez Zur. Do these things go together – for a reason I 'm not sure I can explain? Only last year I read Carmen Bin Laden, a relation by marriage of Osama, stating that there are more homosexuals in Saudi Arabia than the whole of Europe. That I find hard to believe but I got her point. Speculating randomly I might want to wonder, if this is true, if it might have something to do with the unavailablilty of women. You can't even, in these conservative areas, look at them in full sensual glory, except at home and only then if she's one particular person – your wife. But you can't get a wife unless you can afford one and have negotiated the various socio-economic hurdles required to convince her father that you're not impoverished or in any way disreputable. Might you want soulful, intellectual communion with that female body with whom you share yours? In a culture that limits the freedom and spirit of women, in order to protect their honour, (I don't understand this, not really), you might not be programmed to expect, nor her to provide, such a stimulus. So rather like boys in a boarding school you might want to look to shores able to provide a more accessible form of intimacy, especially if the available prostitutes are either too expensive or, like the rest of the women, lacking in interesting discourse potential.

I am not trying to insult Islam. I suppose, though, I may offend some Muslims. People must live as they wish, however much I feel that the way they choose to live, on the basis of my own perceptions, is disturbingly exotic. I am just wanting to call a spade a spade and wonder how to explain this connection – if it exists – between homosexuality in Islam and religious conservatism. If that connection doesn't exist, what I say is irrelevant, because untrue, so there's no reason to be offended, surely.

As it happens there is much I like about the culture that has been shaped by Islam. But this has to do with my general respect for its noble opposition to the dehumanizing forces of the consequences of reductive materialism, its stalwart defence of the spiritual side of man, a defence Christendom has unashamedly abandoned under the influence of its technological innovations and misconceived understanding of the scope and role of reason.

Different Voices

Speaking of names (see last post) I met two people in Aleppo who asked me not to be referred to by their real names. In both cases this is because of what they told me, either because they reasonably fear or are overly paranoid of the Syrian internet police.

In Aleppo, after seven days in Syria, I came across the first voices of outright political dissent, which made for extremely interesting listening. The second of these men I'll write about later. The first I met as I walked around the streets of Aleppo, visibly disorientated after having my head plugged into cyberspace for two hours. This can happen and often does, to me anyway.

Let's call him Peter. Rather like Stephen in Qamishle he came up to me and did all the running, taking me by the arm, enthusiastic to find a genuine Englishman. I agreed to go for tea with him and said I wanted a nargila pipe. I had in mind another of those classicly Arabic teahouses I'd enjoyed in Deir-Ez-Zur with Ahmed. This seemed to confuse him awhile but he responded anyway and led me to a bar that kept on being two minutes away for the next twenty. Pretty soon I guessed from his camp manner that he might be gay. Then when he suggested we go to a Hammam (a public Turkish bathhouse) I discreetly feared the worst. Later in an amiable way he clarified unambiguously both that he was gay and that he wouldn't mind trying to seduce me, which I tried, successfully as it happens, to not let worry me. Not perhaps having been in this situation as much as my vanity would like, I have nevertheless learnt how to deal with these situations.

He told me a number of very interesting things, moreover, which more than made up for my anxiety. When I said I wanted to go to Hama, a city directly to the south, he told me about the Government's February 1982 siege and massacre. As I would later find out, something between ten and thirty thousand people were killed. Luckily for the regime, the world's attention on this event was soon distracted into denouncing Israel for its role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres of the following September, in which something between one and three thousand Palestinian refugees died at the hands of Christian militiamen. What happened at Hama is not an official part of Syrian discourse. If Syrians talk about it they do so in private. Since this clampdown, the Muslim brotherhood, the ringleaders of the revolt that sparked the Governmental reprisals (but who were by no means the only victims of it) have come to understand the severity of what they're up against. The same can be said of others who want to oppose the regime.

After we finally sat down at a classy alfresco restaurant in an upmarket area of town, I found it difficult for awhile to know what we should be talking about. Blithely ignorant at this time that undercover Syrian policemen are found throughout the country, to get things going I asked him what it was like to be gay in Syria. Shiftily looking around to see if anyone was listening, which he did whenever he said anything of substance, he said, somewhat shocked by my naivety, that obviously homosexuals have to be secretive. The parks and the Hammams are the prime meeting grounds. But homosexuality is strictly a crime and men seen kissing one another will be arrested.

That last comment may intrigue anyone who knows how in Arabic lands men will often walk hand-in-hand unashamedly and exchange 'air' kisses on each others cheeks when they meet. In fact I'd been kissed in this way by a waiter in Palmyra when I arrived at Muhammad's restaurant. Obviously, it was a more serious kind of kissing that Peter was talking about. To a Westerner there may seem to be a fine line, easily blurred, between holding hands and more explicit homosexual behaviour. I suppose this is because in the west, alas, heterosexual men are very sensitive about not exchanging more physical intimacy with other men than they need to, lest they be thought gay. But in the Middle East it's very different. One side of the line is ok and totally normal for heterosexual men (as everyone is considered to be), while the other is unambiguously sinful and wrong, if not horrific and criminal.

But Peter didn't only speak about homosexuality. In whispered, furtive tones he told me to tell Amnesty International that there are 3,000 political prisoners locked up outside Damascus. I presumed and hoped Amnesty International would know this already but I let that one lie. I asked if they were Islamic militants, or members of Al-Qaeda. Just intellectuals he said, liberal types, people like him. He then told me that the President had been illegally installed by his father in defiance of the Syrian consitution on 4 points. He was under forty when he became President and wasn't married, he is not a Sunni Muslim but an Alawite, and he hadn't studied for an engineering degree. Today, so he said, the first two conditions have now been met, but not the other two. How much is true about these remaining conditions, or indeed the rest of what he told me, I'm not that sure.

Then I was really surprised when I asked him what he thought about Israel. Thinking on the basis of what I'd heard from all Syrians so far that he too would hate Israel, that his homosexuality and dissident mind wouldn't get in the way of his Arabic solidarity, he actually said he was glad that Israel exists. If it didn't, the Government would not be distracted and would have more time and resources to oppress the people. Certainly a different take, anyway, on what I've speculated about earlier - that some Arab regimes might look to the evil, zionist enemy to help them control their people, by using it as a scapegoat around which to whip up a necessary subservience to the Government.

He still wanted to go to a Hammam with me and I still politely declined. He said he was interested in foreign coins and asked if I had any. As it happened I did and give him two Turkish Lira and two Slovak 10sk coins. He'd ordered some ice cream and chips for himself, while I'd had a beer and coffee. Expecting we'd go dutch at a venue plusher than I'd hoped to visit - me in one of my budgeting frenzies again - he nonetheless arranged with the waiter that I should pay for everything.

Feeling slightly irked by his presumptiouness for awhile I didnt let it bother me really. He'd only taken me for a three pound ride, after all, and I reminded myself how much poorer Syrians were than even British language teachers living in Slovakia. So I contented myself with feeling very satisfied and grateful at the frankness that he'd shown me.

Names in Aleppo

Aleppo is the second biggest city in Syria. It's most famous for its large citadel and marvellous covered souq (or market), noteworthy for the diagonal shafts of light it lets in from the roof.

Alan, Katka and I planned to stay together at the Al-Ghazali hotel near the central clocktower but there was only enough room for me. So this signalled the end of our time together. Oddly enough this was the first time we asked for each other's names, no doubt a major reason why I can't really remember them. I've always had to hear someone's name at least a million times before it sticks. Presumably this is because I don't think people are their names, even if they are.

Indeed, what's in a name? A sociological, arbitrary label or an occult branding granting destiny to the soul? The choice is yours. Personally I'm divided. I don't like to think, as some magical men do, that one's personality can be deternimed by ones name; but then, why is it I so often discern similarities and echoes between people with the same names? And from what I've gathered, I'm not the only one who does this.

Regarding my own name I'm going through a bit of a revolution. Since I was young I was usually known as 'Jon' or 'John' to people outside the family and this was how I introduced myself. The 'h' or not to 'h' question would often cause me confusion. People would tend to think I was a proper 'John' and not 'Jon'as short for Jonathan. How would they know if I didn't correct them and did I really want to correct them anyway? Basically no, probably because I've never felt that attached to Jon anyway. So let them Jon or John as they wished is what I thought, whatever perils that set in store for my sense of identity.

A name I felt more attached to was 'Jonny' or again sometimes 'Johnny', since I've always been called that by my family and some few, choice friends I've always adored and whom I presumed loved me back, or at least somewhat. Why not introduce myself as Jonny or Johnny then? A very fair question. Two reasons: mainly because as a public face to the world it seems a bit weak and pathetic - certainly more so than Jimmy or Eddy ot Tommy, though perhaps not as much, I grant, as Timmy. Secondly, Jonny I felt to be a kind of essence name, if you will. I got the concept of an essence name from Armenian hero Gurdjieff by the way. Jonny was something I wanted to reserve, perhaps defensively, only for people whom I knew wouldn't be indifferent to me or dislike me. If they dislike me, better than they dislike 'Jon'. Is that a kind of magical thinking, you may be wondering? Who knows.

As for Jonathan, I've never really been called that. I never used to introduce myself as Jonathan. I thought it was too heavy, had too many syllables, but also that it seemed pompous and stuck up, why I'm not sure. I would visualise a man in tweed and possibly a barbour jacket and summon up a voice that was plummy, aloof and perhaps too self-consciously erudite. Not nearly cool enough then. So you see, I never had a secure or certain name at all.

Now things are changing and I'm always introducing myself as Jonathan, sometimes with my right hand on my chest in the very endearing Arabic fashion. For this change I have to thank this Delightful Italian Lady whom I've met on the internet. Not only did she honestly intensify all my worries about how sweet and sickly Jonny is as a public moniker, she told me that Jonathan is noble and beautiful. Others have said similar things. And so Jonathan I have become, in practice as well as theory. Preumably now, the knotty range of my identity crises will miraculously be resolved:).

Our Paranoid Bus Driver Has an Experience

After waiting two hours to get a minibus to Homs we finally found one. I'd decided it would be nice to travel on with Alan and Katka since we both wanted to go to Aleppo. Still, I hadn't reckoned on this two hour wait and their determination, and that of another family who joined us, not to accept anything more than the lowest possible price for the 60km ride.

Still, I shouldn't complain. Sometimes i'm as tight as anyone, even though as a rule I disapprove of fastidiousness, especially when dealing with prices universally far lower than would be found at home, or even in Slovakia. It was only unfortunate that at this time I was eager to make progress. I was even tempted to blow prudence to the winds and head to Homs by taxi alone. But I'd decided to travel with my companions so that was that. I tried to get used to the phenonemon of sitting around doing nothing wondering when we'd leave. Usually, in these circumstances I'd be reading, but in company I didn't feel this appropriate. It would have helped if there'd been better places to sit, or perhaps a coffee to sip from. Conversation had also somehow dried up, as it can.

We had no problems on the journey until we reached the outskirts of Homs. Our driver was anxious because he hadn't paid the special tax drivers have to when they carry foreigners. He was terrified of running into the police and wanted only to drive on roads where he thought there wouldn't be any. Apparently, this didn't include most of those in the centre of town. We pulled up by another minibus onto which he tried to shift us. In the case of Alan, Katka and I this was ok since the bus driver agreed to take us to the station. But it wouldn't take the German family to their hotel. Alot of shouting and passionate gestures were flung around between the drivers. That this was happening on a main road didn't worry anyone. So it seemed, from what Katka told me, our driver wanted to just throw them onto the street. This made her furious and she asssailed him in Arabic with torrential reproach, asking how he could call himself a Muslim, being so inhospitable. I think this might have freaked him out. I'm not sure he was used to being talked at like that by a woman, or at least not in public. He relented and all was well.

Reflecting in the Castle

Crak des Chevaliers castle is more impressive on the outside than the inside. Not that this means going inside isn't a fine experience, however. The best thing is to walk around the outer of the two defensive walls and get as close as you dare to the edge. Oddly enough, I felt even more creeping vertigo here than I had at the much higher cliffs of Hasankeyf. Maybe I'd been disturbed by earlier noticing a loose rock that I'd almost vigorously stepped on. Any of those on the edge might have led to interesting consequences.

I had a coffee at the castle's cafe and began in earnest to do something perhaps noticeably odd, something I'd thought of doing three years ago in China - analyse my life in terms of what percentages of it I've been involved in particular phases. Maybe, in a fit of unbridled narcissistic obsession I will publish a comprehensive report at a later date. Here for now I'll give just three examples of the results I came to. Obviously, the results are rough and cannot be exact, but I do have a pretty good memory for things I've been up to and when and for how long. Clearly, all these percentages will change as I get older.

I) I have spent 8.4% of the past thirty six years of my life in a state of continuous unawareness*. Never having slipped into a coma, I am referring to the three years (at least) prior to my first ever memory. By the way, I'm pretty sure this was sitting on my Mum's bicycle seat, fixed between her handlebars, being cycled back from kindergarten to 69 Barton Road, Cambridge.

II) I have spent 26.1% of my life at 'school', excluding the school holidays. I put the school in quotation marks because I'm referring only to my education up to the age of 17, when I finished my A-levels. Many people, I know, follow the US example and include University or other Higher Education as part of 'schooling', but I, as an Englishman, do not. If University is added, again excluding holidays as well as those periods during which, for varying reasons, I suspended my studies, it rises to 34%.

The final astonishing fact is a little disappointing, given my love of the 'open road':

III) I have spent a mere 2% of my life engaged in the soul warming 'Odysseus-like' pursuit of solo travelling abroad. This rises to 5.3% if you include travelling abroad with others, including my family.

Actually, I'm almost persuaded to recommend this kind of quantative analysis of one's life to everyone. I imagine it's far more interesting doing this with your own life than it is reading (as you have had to) about someone else's.

Delphi's Oracle, after all, instructs us to 'Know Thyself'. Yet I wonder if we don't too often attach a too subjective, interiorised understanding to this. Maybe, more often than it should be, this is understood to mean you should reflect introspectively on your 'occult' or esoteric self, the perceiving I, that mysterious, possibly ungraspable 'me' that everyone - except the Buddhists - believes we all possess. Sometimes this search is avoided outright, because it can be a tortuous and perilous affair, putting us in touch with all kinds of uncomfortable, embarrassing revelations.

Questions might also be raised about what this 'self' is that we are trying to reflect on. Is it, for humanists, Freud's Id, Ego or Superego that we are talking about, and if all three then in what combination. Otherwise, looking at things spiritually, by the 'self' are we talking about the 'ego' or the 'true self', that aspect of our realities which by many is understood to be inseparable from the divine.

Undoubtedly there is more to us than we perceive ourselves to be from the inside, however we understand that. There is also us as we relate, bodily, to the objective, external world, peopled by other independently thinking, judging people who have no experience of that 'private' self of our own which only we can know.

Even though we are often counselled in these unhumble, self-assertive days to not give a camel's ass what otherse think of us, it's undeniably the case that all the people we meet and interact with, to degrees related to their powers of attention and basic interest in us, have an impression of how we come across to them. Unbiased by not being the person in question, they can see us from the outside in a way we never can, however worryingly enthusiastic ones self-videoing exploits might be. That public, embodied, exoteric 'I' is as much a part of who I am as anything I might suppose is the truth relating to my inner psychodramas.

Sure, their evaluations of us will be conditioned by a different set of biased lenses of perception. A Palestinian, for example, may be inclined to assess the behaviour of an Israeli, and an Israeli that of a Palestinian, with an additional ingredient of malignity, lacking in that of a Mexican or a Mongol for one another. But this doesn't change the fact that the ways we come across to others, as multifarious as those may be, depending on the observer, are integrally involved in any understanding of who we are.

The problem is that in order to get this knowledge of what others think of you, you may have to embarrass and demean yourself in potentially pathetic and deeply insecure ways. You can't accumulate the necessary data for this kind of self-analysis on your own.

So, maybe what you can do, more easily, to reflect on your public, embodied self is to do what I've done and take a look at what you've been up to, and for how long, in the theatre of the world. Of course I know that in a very limited sense we already do this through the very formalised procedure known as 'Writing your CV'. But this begs the question, I fear worryingly too often answered in the affirmative: 'Are we what we 'do' or 'have done' in the world of employment?'

Speaking personally, as one might expect on a blog, I don't understand my identity in terms of what I do for a living. Yes, this is partially because I don't particularly like being an English language teacher. But I hope, even if I loved my job, I'd accept that I'm not my profession, since work, evaluated as it is in terms of success and attainment, income and status, so often leads one to understand oneself in distinction from, and either above or beneath, others, as somehow set apart from our common, shared humanity.

Obviously, my ability to compile a really thoroughgoing analysis of my life's activities is limited. I cannot know, for example, what percentage of my waking life I've spent talking to single, available women that I have both found attractive and actually stood a chance with. Or, for example, the percentage of my life I've spent brushing my teeth or taking a bath, eating in restaurants or walking in the open air, reading books or spent lost, delightedly, in the arms of adequate seating before the giant screen of a multiplex.

Yet who knows, perhaps this knowledge is somehow out there, recorded by celestial clerks keeping assiduous records of my behaviour, and yours too. I can but hope so, and hope to find out so if and when I'm translated into ether. Being in this analytical regard a stereotypical virgoan, I must confess I'd find the findings fascinating.

Georgia and Jordan

Later on I had a proper chat with Alan and Katka, the French-Georgian couple I’d met on the bus. To be frank, I’m not sure his name is Alan and I’m certain hers isn’t Katka but she looks like a Katka and I’ve got to call her something.

They met in Jordan 18 months ago. He as a French traveller, she as a Georgian tour guide working in Petra (I think). Getting married required overcoming considerable hurdles. He needed to go to Tblisi, as well as negotiate the labyrinthine French bureaucracy. But now all is well at last and they are living in Paris.

I showed Katka the Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan Lonely Planet I bought in Goreme, which now pointlessly helps weigh down my bag. I learnt something I didn’t know about too, the Georgian secessionist drama surrounding Abkhazia which, so I read yesterday, threatens to kick off again with Russian approval if Kosovan independence is recognized without Serbian approval. Serbia doesn’t look likely to approve anything of the sort, and the US, at the very least, looks set to recognize Kosovo, with or without UN support. So we’ll have to see what happens.

I knew nothing about this sensitive issue before. This is what comes from living in ‘your own world’ as it is said, which I did for much of the 90s.

I asked her about Shevardnaze, a man in many of our headlines in the late 80s as the Soviet Foreign Secretary during the years of Glastnost and the death of the USSR. As I’d suspected, she told me Georgians hated this former President of their sixteen year old republic. But I didn’t know by quite how much. Apparently mired in all kinds of corruption, partiality and general incompetence, he inflicted on his country a period of stagnation and inertia that has only been reversed since Saakashvili took power in 2003. I’m not sure this would be quite how he’d read this, but it’s what she told me and no doubt she knows more about this than I.

I’d ignorantly thought Georgians were Slavs, just because I’d known they were Christians and were bang next to Russia. But they’re not, they’re apparently descendants of what the Greeks called the Colchians and the Iberians. The former group had the Golden Fleece taken from them by Jason, if you recall. As for the Iberians, I’m guessing this suggests a Spanish connection, geography posing no objection, presumably.

Katka speaks good Arabic, which helped us in our negotiations with drivers to get us to the castle cheaply and easily. She told me, too simplistically or not, that the Jordanians, with whom she’s been working, hate the Palestinians. Less of a burden since the PLO was ejected from Jordan in Black September in 1970, there are still nevertheless two million Palestinian refugees living in Jordan. She didn’t explain exactly why they're hated but I got the impression they’re just not trusted, and looked down on as rootless foreigners, which of course they are; though this being no fault of theirs. It is an additional burden that the displaced, stateless Palestinians must face; not only have they lost their ancestral lands over the past 59 years at the hands of the Israelis, they have hardly been given much of a welcome or helped much by the Arab regimes to which they have fled.

Whether this is because, and if so to what extent, the Palestinian refugees are deliberately being kept in a state of poverty and misery to inflame anti-Israeli feelings is an interesting question. Certainly, regimes that want internal security, to hold back the floodgates of internal dissent, would do well to find an external entity to hate, someone or something around which to encourage national unity and obedience in defiance of this diabolized other. For sure, if the exiled Palestinians had found a happy life for themselves outside their ancestral lands; if they didn’t have to live as so many do in refugee camps, a strong case could still be made against Israel, given the fact that Israel was the original cause of their leaving. But I’m sure it wouldn’t be such a strong case.

Naturally, I hope this is untrue. But if it is: ‘Why must the Palestinians still suffer so much, outside of as well as inside the occupied territories?’ is a question that springs to mind. It’s hardly that the Arabic world is not rich enough to help them, is it?

Might it be a question of Arabic pride? ‘The wound was caused by Israel. It is Israel’s to heal by rolling into the sea, or letting the refugees back, at least. If we, the rich Arab states help the Palestinians too much, this will lessen the wound and might work towards legitimizing Israel.’

What do I know, I’m just asking questions.

Crak Des Chevaliers

Over nine hundred years ago in 1095, for the purported reason of protecting the rights of access to the holy sites of Jerusalem, the Western world, with Papal blessing and encouragement, launched a crusade to control the Holy Land and win it back for Christendom (Western this time) four hundred years after Byzantine Christendom lost it to Islam.

Never penetrating that far inland the crusaders nevertheless succeeded, through eight subsequent crusades, in holding various regions of modern day Israel, Lebanon and Syria for almost two hundred years. To aid them in this task, against an indigenous population discouraging their presence, they built a series of impressive castles. One of these, perhaps the most famous, is what the tourist industry and the West in general calls 'Crak Des Chevaliers', the seat of the Knights Hospitalliers from 1144 to 1271. Built on a former Kurdish castle, after the crusaders left it was rebuilt and developed further by the Mamlukes. So today it's not exactly as it was then, but close enough we're told. Certainly it looks European, with its uncompromising stentorian walls of fixed, cubic zeal. No wavy lunar contours here, no minarets imitating space rockets.

Unlike Jerusalem, Crak Des Chevaliers never fell to the famous Kurdish Islamic hero and warrior, Salah al-Dīn (Saladin), despite his attempt to recover it in 1188. In fact it was never conquered at all but only surrendered to the army of Sultan Baibars in 1271 when the Knights Hospitallers realised the game was up. Luckily, for them personally, however, it wasn't. All of the 200 or so Christian Knights were granted safe passage to the sea in another example of Islamic magnaminity to the vanquished that shames the memory of the more bloodthirsty and vengeful West.

Originally I was going to visit the castle on my way to Hama from Lattakia on a return loop from the northern town of Aleppo, which I was planning to visit next. But I met a very pleasant French and Georgian couple on the bus from Palmyra and decided to change my plans. I also realised seeing the castle was a priority and wasn't sure how pushed I'd be for time later as my fifteen day visa drew to a close.

Getting to the castle is difficult. Most visit from Hama or Homs on day trips but I agreed with the French-Georgian couple that it would be nice to stay the night there so decided to do just that. After a shared bus from Homs we checked into a semi-luxurious hotel overlooking the castle. From my hotel window I could look out and see a clear and stunning view of the castle.

Tired and needing rest, I decided to take it easy and go inside the castle early tomorrow morning before the ferocity of the sun kicked in. So, from the hands of a very camp, charming restauranteur, I indulged in a wonderful meal that stuffed my stomach so much I had to crash out for a couple of hours. Once recovered, I walked to the castle entrance as the sun went down. A young girl danced expressively, surrounded by applauding men, seemingly entirely unself-conscious, in an vaguely erotic manner that I found reassuring. If the women can do that, it's surely a good sign.

I walked down the winding road to the nearby village, where I saw my first picture of Bashar Al-Assad with Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, an image one presumes that might strike terror, or at least contempt, into the hearts of Northern Israelis. I found myself thinking : Ok, Nasrallah, you have the right, I suppose, to defend Shia in southern Lebanon from Israeli incursions; but is it necessary to be smiling all the time like some honey monster? Israelis kill your people, yes, and other Lebanese too, but this doesn't mean you don't kill them in return, does it? Or indeed, other Lebanese people as well. Are we sure killing is something to smile about? Still, I should be fair. I haven't seen all his posters. Also, I suppose it might not be that when he smiles it's Israelis dying that he's thinking of. Who knows, perhaps he's in some kind of mystical ecstasy. Hezbollah is very religious, after all. Or maybe he's just trying to reassure and inspire his people in their suffering. After all, it's not only the Israelis they have to worry about. As the poorest community in Lebanon, there's also the poverty and the other Lebanese. Maybe the smiling is so striking just because one doesn't expect it from someone classified as a terrorist.

I really didn't fancy the walk back to the castle. Sending out thought signals asking for a lift actually worked after awhile, and I was driven by a nice, I think rather wealthy, Syrian guy all the way to the top. Interestingly, he lives in America and is even a US citizen, having married an American. This is not that easy to do, since the Americans, perhaps rightly, suspect many Syrians only want to do this for the passport.

Up by the castle the dancing girl had stopped and I sat by some Syrians for a tea. Two men spoke very good English. One of them lived in Dubai, while the other was his brother. More aimiable curioisty about why I was here, and another opportunity to be corrected in the faulty pronunciation of the few Arabic phrases I'd managed to pick up.

Muhammad

Given the heat it's good to use the internet in the middle of the day. This frees up the cooler hours for your non-virtual life, which is more or less important than your 'real' life depending on your opinion.

Like much in Palmyra the internet is expensive. But Mahran knew of a place in an Islamic cultural centre that was five times cheaper than the tourist cafes and kindly drove me there on his way to a philosophy course. Mahran, whose English is excellent, has a brother living in Bath in the UK who comes back to Syria most years. Mahran travels there when he can but it's difficult, so he tells me, for Syrians to get visas. This is because the UK authorities don't like Syrians visiting, in case they stay or, presumably, blow things up. Beyond that the visas are expensive. Then beyond the visa obstacle is the prohibitive expense of Britain in relation to the average Syrian income, which is between 150-200 dollars a month. Even the flight would be double that. Then they must reckon with the famous costs of a country which include, for example, an astonishing six dollars for a single ride on the Capital's underground. Well, unless you get an Oyster card. But how useful are these for short visits?;a question I often asked myself when I returned from Slovakia.

In the evening I went to Palmyra's Bedouin restaurant. Situated under an enormous tent, it has carpets and low headrests next to knee-high tables. In return for a free tea I was serenaded with account after account of how gorgeous Muhammad's meals had been, written by travellers of various nationalities, stored in a series of notebooks that he left me to leaf through.

Then a pretty French woman came in and I gestured that perhaps she’d like to join me. She smiled and did so and we exchanged the usual chit chat. She looked impressed that I'd come from Qamishle, not Damascus or Aleppo like most people but maybe I imagined that. She said she was here to see her friend, who upon my gentle curiosity was confirmed to be her Syrian boyfriend. Soon enough he appeared and without talking to me talked to her as if they'd agreed it was ok for him to tell her what to do, despite the visible irritation she displayed. I imagined, rightly or wrongly, that he was cross with her for apparently wanting to talk to me. Maybe I was wrong. But even though he then left the restaurant for awhile she got up and moved to the other side of the tent, where he joined her shortly afterwards. Anyway, as long as she's happy.

Sufficiently persuaded by the complimentary notebooks, I decided to order the suggested menu which was recommended by two Germans to my left. A tendency already apparent in Central and Eastern Turkey was becoming ever stronger in Syria: namely for most travellers I meet to be Western-Continental European, most commonly German, and even more so French. The Anzac-Anglo-North American predominance noticeable in Greece, Bulgaria and Western Turkey is evidently eroded when cultural references become too exotic and the availabilty of resources for riotous drinking retreat. Am I being unfair? No doubt we're not all like this. But many of us are. I'm not asking to have these perceptions. I'm not asking to meet so few people from the Anglo-Saxon sphere as I travel to the obscurer realms, I just don't. This German-French preponderance is confirmed, more objectively, in some of the 'book exchange' programmes some hostels and hotels run in which I can find hardly any in my usually triumphant tongue.

I don't really understand the 'French Connection' and I'm not talking about the film. Is the allure of this country to the French purely to be explained in terms of the Mandate France exercised over Syria and Lebanon from 1921 to 1946? That's only 25 years. We were in India for two hundred. I don't see us flocking there in consequence to revel in the culture of our former dependants. Nor, more closer, are British travellers drawn to Jordan or Egypt or were we to Iraq before the war gave us a decent reason to stay away. All those were 'British' or strongly under British influence anyway, as recently as the Levant was French. Are the French drawn to countries in which (at last!) French and not English is the second language. Is that it? Someone told me it’s a legacy of the crusades when the region was heavily visited by French aristocrats. But not all the crusaders were French and that was centuries ago anyway. Someone else said the French still like to exert an influence in the region to counter that of others, the US in particular, and that close ties with these countries enable this.

Anyway, whatever the reasons Syria’s a good place to visit if with your hot climate and ruins you want to get away from the Anglos and be called 'Monsieur'.

During the evening Muezzin's call I realised I wasn't sure what it meant. The Muezzin's call (the adhan) is the 5 times a day public call to prayer specifically designed to torment atheists or anyone who thinks religion can be a private matter, not a fact of civic life. Actually, I've got used to it and can even find it beautiful. Blended with the machine gun fire of car horns blasting disgust at other drivers - just for being there - the call sometimes continues for ages saying Sinbad knows what. But it always begins with these words:

"God is the Greatest, God is the Greatest
I believe that there is no God but Allah
I believe that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah
Come to Prayer
Come to Peace,
Come to Salvation.

Ok, I know that is just one translation of one version but I’m not here to quibble. The above version was told me by one of the German guys and I find it more melodious, more rhythmically agreeable than the alternative, perhaps more accurate versions I’ve found on Wikipedia.

Interestingly enough, just as Muslims got their Minarets from Church towers and their Domes from Byzantium, so Christians began tolling their bells when Francis of Assisi heard the Muslim call to prayer and thought 'aha ha', that's their secret.’

I have since thought how by changing just a few words in the second and third lines you can make it Christian. Just have 'There is no God but God' , or even 'no God but The Lord' and alter the third line to "I believe that Jesus Christ, the Saviour, is the Son of God"...

I'm not sure how well the third line would go down, however; even though, in English anyway, it would have the same number of syllables.

Zenobia

Somewhat like ancient Kommagene, where Mt Nemrut is found, Palmyra used to comprise an independent Kingdom that stood up to, or at least apart from, the surrounding empires of Rome/Byzantium and Persia, which dominated the Middle East between Alexander and Islam.

Palmyra at its zenith in 270 AD was led by the famous, apparently very beautiful Zenobia, who took over the Kingdom of Palmyra after her husband Odeinat was assassinated because her son was too young to rule. The height of her ambition saw her expanding her Kingdom into Egypt and Asia Minor as far as Bithynia. Captured in 272 she was taken to Rome in golden chains and lived the rest of her life in a villa in Tivoli, presumably having done something to someone to be afforded such a graciousness.

Luckily I came across a sometimes hilarious 'Guide to Syria' book which had much more information about Syria's major sites than my over-generalised Lonely Planet.

An example of the quirky humour of the idiosyncratic author, one Afif Bahnassi, is this, lamenting Zenobia's relative historical obscurity compared to that of another Middle Eastern powerful beauty:

'...Zenobia,who is spite of her prowess, did not reach the size of a myth. This would deserve much research. Cleopatra reached the Pantheon of history. Was the nose of Zenobia shorter than the Egyptian queen's? No doubt you will be too attentive to the beauty of the site to ask yourself this question.'

Acknowledging special thanks to the Minister of Tourism for his collaboration and carrying a picture of the former President Hafez Al-Assad, the book is clearly a Government text. Obviously, and agreeably, the zany reflections and tangents of the author do not constitute disloyalty. Meanwhile, the familiar concern of the writer, as he assumes to take you in hand - telling you all you need to do and see in your trip - is also strangely charming.

Interesting, though, is the lack of any reference in the history section to the centuries old interaction and wars between the ancient Syrian Kingdoms (such as Aram Damascus) and the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. According to Wikipedia, Palmyra used to be called Tadmor and was a part of Solomon's 11th century Israelite Kingdom. Solomon, known for his wisdon, the legendary inspirer of the Masons, the son of David (the stone slinging psalmist), a man who liked his women (enjoying up to 700 wives and 300 concubines) - attracting the attentions of the far distant Ethiopian Queen of Sheeba - is not even mentioned at all. This might be because Afif Bahnassi doubts whether Solomon existed in the first place (as scholars begin to speculate) - which would support any contemporary anti-Israeli stance regarding the 'rights to the land' question, I suppose. I don't know. It would be strange, to me anyway, if Solomon's provenance is doubted, however, given that both David and Solomon are revered by Islam as two of God's important prophets. Or might it just be that the author felt that silence was the best treatment for their enemy's ancestors, especially for any mention of their prosperity or expansion.

The ruins were wondrous, the best since Ephesus. Even though at any time of the day Palmyra is very uncrowded compared to Turkey, seeing the famous ruins early in the morning, long before any crowds at all arrive, is wise. I took a twenty minute camel ride along the main Collonade to the Old Theatre and the Agora, camel slowly led by a boy. This was the first time I'd ridden a camel since Australia in 1991. Thankfully, this time, because the camel was walking and not running, I didn't have my bollocks smashed repeatedly against the saddle. Nonetheless, I still feared falling off because of the camel's remarkably rugged gait. My fear was compounded by memories of falling off a horse in Slovakia in April 2004 because my saddle had not been properly tied on.

Palmyra, alhough a desert town, is set next to an oasis so palm trees border the ancient ruins. I walked through these trees, intrigued by the unexpected greenness and was shortly invited for tea by some locals, owners of what looked like a mechanic's shop. Our dialogue was restrained by the language barrier, though I tried my hardest to make them laugh with my phrase book, a tactic which seemed to work.

September 11th, 1971 10.15am

Dear Readers,

Thirty Six years ago a small baby boy was lifted out of the womb of a sedated woman in Cambridge, England. That baby boy, weighing an ambitious nine pounds, was me, and the woman, unsurprisingly, was my mother. The doctor who performed this caesarian operation is unknown to me but evidence suggests he or she did a good job.

You will understand that though this event had no importance to the world in general, and had only limited significance to those with whom I would later interact, it was monumentally important for me - even more so, it might be argued, than it was for my mother. At the time of course, even though she was unconscious at the actual moment of delivery, the significance was only hers, since I was totally unaware of the event, just as I would remain completely unaware of my existence for the next three years.

For some reason, as yet unexplained to me, my Father had told my siblings that I would be a girl. I was to be called 'Katie'. Before the days of scanning, the reason for this prognostication was the apparently slight size of my Mother's belly during pregnancy, or so I have been told.

Anyway, as former girlfriends, and fellow boys in the school showers can attest, if asked, I am actually a man, just as I used to be a boy. I have not always been glad about this fact, it must be said, and I've often sighed at the female's privileged permission to wax lyrical about all things emotional, as well as to have the greater freedom in the range of attire she can uncontroversially wear, 'cross-dressing' (barring the male suit) having become for her an almost non-existent phenonemon in modern western life.

Even during those times when I have most wanted to die, I never actually wished, I think, that I had never been born. So here today may I take this opportunity to be thankful for the fact that I am, to thank my Mother for her role in this event (I am additionally glad that by being Caesarian, like Macduff, 'not of woman born', I did not cause her pain), to thank my late Father also if he can read this, and to express the pointless wish that I continue to be glad to be alive, and if possible, though this be not possible, not to get any older - or, at the least, for the advance of my grey hair to slow the fuck down.

Most weird, it might be thought, that we celebrate the fact that we're getting older, one year closer to death, as the Floyd might have it. Still, if the 'number issue' (a Babylonian contrivance anyway it must be admitted) can be laid to one side, and the days of ones birthday merely be understood as an opportunity to remember to be glad to be alive, then I have no scruples at all in wishing myself a very Happy Birthday!

This birthday I share with the President of Syria, as it happens, who is six years older than me, and has far less grey hair (dye or no dye)! I also share it with D.H.Lawrence. September 11 is also the death-day of Nikita Khruschev who managed to live comfortably in retirement despite being ousted by Brezhnev.

My birthday is also, as everyone knows, famous for the collapsing of the Twin Towers and related plane crashes and the tragic death of those affected, an event which is generally, though not universally, thought to have been brought about by Osama Bin Laden and his friends without the complicity, or knowledge, of any western agency. Those who question this consensus think (and claim to be able to prove) either that he did it with western help and/or knowledge, or that he had no part in it all, it having been an utterly inside job.

I, of course, know nothing, though I must say I would like to think the western world did not kill its own people in order to justify the Neo-Conservative agenda, so I suppose I'm a bit biased.

If Western Governments did play a role, however, (which I sincerely hope they didn't) then utter, unending shame on you, you meglomaniacal crusading bastards.

If they didn't, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my invitation to Osama and the like to desist from their bloodlusts and involve themselves in pursuits altogether more charming.

Yours pompously and utterly self-obsessed, although I hope not selfishly,

Jonathan Mark Tillotson

Palmyra

If you are anything like me you will want, in the middle of the day, to look out of the window when travelling by bus or train. You will want to do this even more if you're travelling in a foreign country. In Syria, at least if you travel by the upmarket Karnak or Pullman buses, this may prove difficult. Presumably, to escape the glare of the midday sun, but conceivably to shut out the tedium of the ever-rolling desert as well, curtains are kept closed by all but the strange.

I was sitting by a window so I felt within my rights to open mine. Shortly, they were pulled shut by the friendly assistant who perhaps thought I'd failed to grasp the sensible precautions against sun and desert. I opened them again, just a bit, just a little, enough to give me light for reading, and he didn't bother me again. Stares were received from the man to my left, so I nudged them back again, just a fraction. The War of the curtain had reached a truce, about which I was glad.

Luckily, the desert is really fairly boring, once you've seen it for more than a couple of minutes, so since I had my slither of light for my book, I didn't mind that much.

Reading in cars or buses was never something I could do until I took a three month trip across South America with a travel adventure company when I was eighteen. Six hour daily journeys, combined with being far less sociable than I am now (though I'm hardly party HQ today) meant I was forced to read. Even my trusty Walkman and the plastic bag of those now defunct audio cassetes was not enough to keep my eyes from the page. I suppose I just must have grown used to the enclosed vehicular motion. The car sickness, which would rapidly seize me as a child, didn't bother me anyway. Perhaps the food I was eating had fortified my stomach, who knows.

Today, the importance of reading in motion is even greater. Unlike in South America, I am often surrounded by people whose language is meaningless to me (my fault, yes!) and who can't speak English. So I can't even creep out of social insularity when I want to, unless to engage in necessarily brief crumbs of very basic interraction, fun and energetic though that is. Added to this, my new MP3 player has only two Turkish songs on it, both of which threaten to kill by repetition and its radio only occasionally works. So there I am, needing to read, needing my slice of window light.

Kudos to the Syrian buses, at least the posher ones. The leg room is adequate, people come round with free water (which I, a coward, refuse), they are fast, and the air-conditioning is formidably good.

Palmyra is the easternmost part of what could be called the standard Syrian tourist circuit. This is reflected in the non-attention my Middle East Lonely Planet pays to anything further East. Now, less adventurously, I could at last rely on its brand of wise counsel to direct me to fine lodgings, in this case the New Aqua Hostel, ran by Mahran, a man famous for his Backgammoning skills. Actually, not having met any backpackers since Hasankeyf, I was glad to talk to some of these travllers whom I'm sometimes glad to escape. I'd pompously hoped I wouldn't meet any who'd been any further east, but no. Four Germans in the hostel, taking a break before learning Arabic in Damascus, had come from Deir Ez-Zur as well and, dammit, had even gone right up to the Iraqi border.

I saw Mahran praying on a mat next to the TV. Evidently a devout Muslim, we eased over tea into a discussion about his religion. He told me that if I were to become a Muslim I would discover something so great I wouldn't want anything else in life. Glad he'd found something so fulfilling, feeling slightly under pressure to justify my ignorant, infidel status, I said, perhaps provocatively, but not meaning to offend, 'never join a party you can't leave', referring to the Islamic injuction against apostasy. To this he didn't reply. We then discussed the Sunni-Shia problems in Iraq, a matter which I raised. He said that there are no such problems and never have been. It has all been deliberately provocated and inflamed by the Americans in order to divide the opposition and secure their domination. So the same line as I'd read in the Syria Times. I didn't really know at the time about the history of Sunni-Shia relations so had nothing to say. If Wikipedia is to be trusted (?), I have since read enough to suggest there has been sufficient pre-2003, let alone pre-1776, Sunni-Shite animosity to cast his understanding in significant doubt. Then I pointed out, apparently meaninglessly, the President's picture above the reception. I wanted to know what he would say. I was wondering if the pictures that adorn every hotel reception I'd been to were there by decree or because the owners put them there, in part at least from their own choice. He said the President was a good one. I didn't feel comfortable asking if he had to have the picture there but perhaps I should have. Problem was, I wasn't sure if he didn't find me a bit irritating as it was.

Mahran suggested I should go with him and the Germans to the castle overlooking Palmyra to see the sunset and the views. I hadn't planned to do this and was glad about the suggestion. Driving up there in the open air, in the back of a truck, along the bumpy road, short hair ruffled by the breeze, I realised I'd not had a similar experience since I was in Botswana in 1990 with Operation Raleigh. Then such open air trucks would take us from Phuduhudu, where we were building a hospital clinic, to Maun, to collect cement bags for the bricks we were making. Huddled in the back, sometimes for hours, was a vivid, painful experience. But today it was just beautiful.

Nobody seems to know who built Palmyra's castle. To get in is relatively cheap (3 dollars) but fifteen times cheaper if you have a International Student's Card. I decalimed rather dramatically that I should have got one forged, which provoked loud laughter from a nearby Englishman and information from his Syrian companion that I could do just that by going to the bazaar in town. Actually, I was sort of joking, but still, an interesting idea. Good for the Syrians, it must be said, for giving such discounts to students. I supposed this may be an expression of the Baath party's Socialist ideology, an ideology steadily being eroded in other areas as the Syrians try to open up their economy to private money.

The sunset was wonderful. Falling into conversation with a Dutch woman, I got separated from the Germans and couldn't find them. Mahran had been a bit imprecise about when he'd come back to collect us. Feeling worried after a while that he'd already come back and left again with the Germans, thinking I'd gone down with someone else, I feared being stuck there alone and having to walk, there being no taxis. So, agreeing with the Dutch woman that that would be a hideous fate, I went down with her and we had a lovely dinner together. As I suspected might have happened, however, Mahran had not yet come and the Germans were still there, high up in the castle. They waited for 30 minutes and Mahran even walked around calling out my name. Embarrassed, I later apologised for what I'd done and explained my overly paranoid motivation. I was very impressed that he didn't charge me extra money for his kind trouble.

Paper

Syria, a police state, unashamedly so I believe (so I'm hardly saying anything controversial) likes to do its bit, like so many of us, to make sure there's enough paper floating around to give the trees a fright.

Actually, my experiences of India's bureacracy persuades me that democracies also like to wrap us up in pointless forms and notices. So I suppose I should be fair and underplay the police state connection.

Still, since arriving in Syria, everyday my passport has been photocopied by my hotels. But leaving Deir-Ez Zur, I had to give my name and occupation and of course show my passport twice, both to the ticket office and to some friendly policemen in their own little booth. Of course, they may have asked for such details lovingly in case there was a crash and they needed to know who I was -if for example my passport were wedged unreachably beneath my immovable body. I'm inclined to think, however, that it was so they could know where I'm going and keep a trace on me. About this I have two things to say. Firstly, that since this is their country, they can do as they wish, and I do suppose after all that it's possible that I'm a subversive threat intent on all manner of nastiness. Secondly, that if it is true, why, I am flattered. Never that ill-diposed to the allure of attention seeking (just ask my school friends what I did in assembly when I was 17), it is charming to think that I have all these people interested in me, and all for doing nothing.

I have also heard that the internet is closely monitored in Syria. Yes, yes, I know, this may happen in Britain too, even before any attempts officialdom might want to make to get legal permission to do so. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen here too. Not that I know it does, mind. I'm just going from what Syrians and an expat living here told me. Again my thought is, wow, that's charming, added to a faint anxiety: I hope I'm not too boring.

Speaking of paper and its nefarious relationship to tree slaughtering, does anyone have any statistics on how much less paper exists since the advent of the internet? You'd think there would be quite a bit less, but is there? I suppose, given the enduring sovereignty in so many circles of the 'original signature', carved by hand, not much may have changed, but what about all that personal correspondence that has now virtualised?

Ahmed

Soon enough I found an internet cafe and settled down. Yet again I was infuriated by the lethargy and near insanity of Syria's connection. One person I've spoken to blames this on the Government not wanting its people to download too much stuff, etc. Another said people do not install virus protection software and so the computers are all filled with spyware and other vermin.

Remarkably, my visibly animated bearing towards the screen did not discourage the attentions of a rather tall, thin, graciously spoken young man called Ahmed. After exchanging pleasantries and asking me where I was from, he suggested we could go for a chat after we'd finished. Ok, I thought, that would nice. I hadn't spoken to anyone comfortabe with English since Qamishle and was additionally motivated by the fact that Ahmed was unequivocably an Arab, though to begin with I wasn't sure. I wanted to speak with an Arab, and now I could.

After we found a cafe by the river I decided to order a Nargila, a full one for myself along with my tea. Originally I'd suggested we go for a beer but Ahmend said that would mean either buying a can and drinking it while walking somewhere, or going to a bar outside the centre where beer can be drunk.

Ahmed wanted to know what British people think about Syria. This I find is a fairly common question. As I told him, I don't think most British people have an opinion or care much about Syria one way or another, either its Government or its people. To do so would distract valuable attention-energy from the far more vital preoccupation with general dissipation through the services of reality TV, celebrity and footballing idol-worship and from the general simulated razmatazz of an advertising- media matrix that infantilises the soul. No doubt, if most would be asked specifically about Syria they'd think 'terrorist' and 'oh shit' in some diffuse way accompanying a fear of explosions and planes falling from the sky.

I think the ability of most British people to distinguish between Muslims in general and Arabs in particular is limited enough, let alone their ability to hold specifically Syria-focused opinions as opposed to ones directed towards the Arabic world in general. Our media, God please don't bless them, are not conscientious in educating the passive masses in the many finer or not so fine distinctions prevailing between the peoples of the Muslim faith. By way of mediaman's irresponsibilty, therefore - for which he gets paid! - I am inclined to forgive my fellow countrymen for not knowing, for example, if they don't know, that both the Syrian Government and the Syrian people in general have no time and respect for Al-Qaeda.

I also told Ahmed that I think the British Government, which as you'd expect is more interested in Syria than is the British people, has no specific argument with the Syrian people but only with its Government - because of its alleged involvement in, or at least toleration of, an alleged smuggling of weapons into Iraq; and its less allegedly warm relations with Iran (the currently unflavourable country) and the anti-Israeli organisation Hezbollah, headed up by the ever smiling Nasrallah. I grant, though, that it is unfortunate and unjust that the Syrian people should be punished through the great difficulties they face in getting UK visas because of our beef with the Syrian Government over its attitude towards its neighbours.

This, as my nervous system had suspected, was a trigger for Ahmed to launch, albeit gently, into a justification of Syria's stance towards Israel on the basis of what I suspected to be a presumption that by trying to elucidate my Government's attitude to Syria I was therefore a defender of it and, by extension, a defender of Israel. Feeling somewhat embarrassed to be supposed to be defending a country, Israel, just because I wasn't sharing in his denunciation of it, I listened calmly to what he had to say - mainly about how many Palestinians Israel keeps killing, something which I felt I didn't need to be told was awful since I don't like Palestinians being killed, just as I don't like any killing (even of animals, despite my hypocritical proclivity for meat).

Ahmed, an English language teacher and about 23, told me when I asked him if he wanted to go to Britain that he didn't. Why did he need to go there, he said, since all that he needed was here? Fair enough, I thought, glad he was so patriotic. Still, I should say this attitude is pretty rare. While most Syrians would share his patriotism and pride in his culture, most do want to go to the west, sometimes very much.

The dialogue morphed into a discussion about Islam. It's interesting the way Muslims like Ahmed seem to conclude that just because I come from a country in historical Christendom that therefore I am a Christian. Actually, as it happens, I sort of am a Christian by belief as well as by culture, though it depends what you mean by 'Christian'. He would refer to me as if I was a part of a generalised 'you' which he took to be 'Christians' in a way that felt like we'd leapt back in time to a period when, yes, the vast majority of people in Europe were, at least by what they attested, Christian, be that voluntarily or else under the impress of fear and coercion. Still I went with it, somewhat charmed by his quaint, generalisng mind that seemed unaware that most people in Britain are Pagans, embracing a vague, yet resolutely ego-affirming, belief in some undefined greater otherness.

What he wanted to say was that Islam is a religion of peace. I'd heard this before. Indeed, the meaning of 'Islam', as well as denoting 'submission to God' is also said to mean 'peace'. I suppose I can see, to be fair, how if everyone in a group or society 'submits' to some overarching hierarchical force, be that divine or otherwise, peace would be a natural consequence. But this still begs the question whether the peace conveyed by this submission, this surrendering of the disputatious ego - that naughty inflammatory upstart in the mind - would justify the loss of independence of mind that the unsubmitted diplay, for all their faults. I mean, to be frank, there was peace in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia But was the peace worthwhile? Most would think not. While I'm not implying that Islam, except in its basest manifestations, comes anywhere close to being evil and hideous as was Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, I just wanted to say that peace in-itself, when bought about by submission, is not necessarily a good thing. So I question the logical connection between peace through submission and goodness.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. His point, more specifically, was that Islam doesn't invade and conquer other cultures and oppress them, as mine does. So what, I asked, about the astonishing explosion of the Islamic sphere in the 7th and 8th centuries when Islam stretched from southern France to India? He said, interestingly, that well, it was ok for Islam to conquer other Arab countries. Hmmmm, I thought, but ok, for argument's sake. So what about the Spaniards and the Persians and the Indians? He answered that in Spain there were 'alot of probems' and Islam helped them out. Is that what the Spaniards thought I wondered, but didn't ask. I mentioned Indonesia too, a more recent addition to the Islamic world. I could have mentioned the Ottoman drive into the Balkans too, but it didn't come to mind, oddly. He said that Islam is for everyone and that Muslims have a duty to help non-Muslims learn and benefit from Islam. A clever riposte, undoubtedly.

Please note that I know that if Islam has been guilty of imperialistic expansion, so too has Christendom. But two wrongs do not make a right. I don't see how you can argue the virtue of something questionable just becasue it has also been committed by the other side.

I agreed with him, though, that Islam, within its already established spheres, has been noticeably tolerant towards Jews and Christians (and Sabians, one might add). In this I accept that Islam has been more tolerant of the differently religious than has post-Constantinian Christendom. Yet though this may be applauded the tolerance still implied a consignment of such 'people of the book' to second class citizenry. And one doesn't need to be a genius to know that not everyone everywhere in the Islamic world was, or is, a Jew, a Christian or a Sabian? What about the Pagans, the Buddhists and the Hindus, the witches, the atheists...to what degree were they tolerated, are they tolerated?. My ignorance as yet asssails me, alas. May the historians and knowers of these matters accurately speak.

Again, the equal or worse culpability of Christendom does not exonerate the opposition. The problem with coercion is universal and seems to collect around every unambiguous system of conceptual belief when allied to the engines of secular power. And let us not have the 'God is the tyrant of history' line wheeled out again. Secular tyrranies have been even worse, even though, luckily, not as long-lasting.

Actually, I didn't say all that to him, partly because of the language issue but also because I dislike diputations, especially if they are liable to ruin my enjoyment of tea, or possibly upset someone. I felt, wrongly or rightly, that I was in a position to upset him if I wanted to. He seemed emotionally identified, if not somewhat in love with, his religious system and I didn't want to rattle him.

Please note, additionally, that I have no special argument with Islam and in many ways quite like it. My argument is with this sub-lunar world as a whole, with people's widespread unwillingness, more than inability, to feel an instinctive love for all people, regardless of who they are or what they believe, as well as their stubborn tendency to want to exile infinity from their hearts and bow down to merely external, exoteric, unchanging representations of the gloriousness of existence - and so, by a process sparked by this lack of inner integration of that gloriousness to store up dark energies in their unconscious that can explode into anger when they encounter people who do not share the same exoteric understanding.

Deir-Ez Zur and Its Fire

Deir-Er Zur is noteworthy for three things. A French built suspension bridge, being the central HQ for the Syrian oil industry, and for its tourist industry which caters to Syrians (mainly) who want to have drinks on the banks of the Euphrates.

It was nice to have crossed the breadth of Mesopotamia, from Hasankeyf's position on the Tigris 300km to the North. Boys can be seen swimming in the Euphrates, floating on the rapids. I'd thought about joining them, but settled for drinking tea beside the river and puffing from a Nargila (a huge Arabic bong contraption, spewing forth innocuous fruitiness), in the company of some hospitable policemen. It being apparent that conversation would be limited, I took out my copy of the threadbare 'Syria Times'. Actually quite well written sometimes, it is the English language mouthpiece of the Syrian Government's perspective on the world. In this it is like all newspapers in Syria where press freedom doesn't exist. Presumably - I am only guessing - the Government likes its people to enjoy simple, uncomplicated thoughts that will lend a rosy sheen to its power prerogatives and deflect irritating nuicances like opposition. Actually, the conceptual content is not that thin, and the paper can be praised for its attitude of sustained seriousness which one might expect from a newspaper, trivial tricks of salemanship and dumbed down superfifciality not being its forte.

Noteworthy is the presence of a rigid party line that is neither complex nor subtle, yet which uses intelligent sounding thoughts to give it the impression of being open minded and reasonable. Ok, ok, maybe all papers everywhere do this, have an angle. But the Syria Times certainly has one too. But the fact that nobody in Syria can read a paper saying anything contrary makes you wonder if the strength of their arguments even impresses the Government that much, given that if the arguments were thought to be strong they'd have nothing to fear. The truth, after all, does not need to be defended. It's just there, however much you might want to deny it. Insisting that certain particular interpretations must be championed and defended and none other allowed to breathe, can only reasonably raise suspicions that their relationship with truth is somewhat questionable. Yes, yes, this is true of all dogmatists everywhere. All who build their castles in inflexible words.

Certainly, the Syria Times is a good rag to read if you hate Israel. As it happens I don't but it's illuminating to read what Syria has to say about a country it calls its enemy. Well, I suppose it is an enemy, given that there has been no peace treaty since the end of the war in 1974. It believes that Israel is a player in a larger entity called 'Imperialism', spearheaded and funded by the US and assisted by my country. This imperialism wants to control the Middle East for selfish ends and has no genuine interest in helping the Palestinians back to dignity and freedom. Such thoughts are not so far away from those found on the genteel sofas of English Islington Guardian readers, are they? Perhaps, however, The Syria Times' additional opinion that the US and Israel are consciously intending to aggravate and promote Sunni-Shia discord in Iraq, in a policy of divide and rule, might shoot it off into a different orbit of opinion. In the west accusations tend more to stop at the idea that the US just wants to make Iraq a safe place for western business, even if it had been an addditional blessing that Saddam went, and that the real or imagined worry about WMD was laid to rest.

My being an innocent in political affairs, somewhat divested of the facts, my being instinctively suspicious of all media -including my own (I may be wrong in much or else just 'mad', whatever that means) - and being, as I am, incapable of subjecting the main players in the region to my own kindly interrogation under the influence of an efficacious truth drug, I honestly don't know whether all or some of the US administration - in either its outward or secret form - is happy when Shia kill Sunni or vica versa. But I would certainly hope not! Certainly it goes against all one hears about the US desire for the country to be stabilised, for whatever purpose that may be. In any case, one wonders why a country in crisis is any easier to exploit financially than one wherein people can buy more of your stuff.

I was glad in any case not to have read in the Syria Times anything biologically anti-Jewish, the kind of "Jews are Satan's offspring" stuff I'd been told inhabits some of the media of the region.

After my tea, bidding good-day to the authorities in the local vernacular (ma a salaama) I found a local Syrian Swimming pool. As usual when I swim I didn't stay in for long, being more interested in just soaking. Lots of Syrian boys were intrigued to see me and very charming, assailing me with a barrage of welcomes and where are you froms. Above the pool were two images of large benignly gazing gentlemen. I'd seen the image of the older man before, but wasn't sure who he was. As a nearby father of boys told me, I was right. He was Hafez Al-Assad, the former President of Syria and father of the current incumbent, Bashar Al-Assad. Bashar's face I was already familiar with. How could I not be? While not literally everywhere it is everywhere in every other sense. In taxis, above hotel receptions, on billboards, on street posters, his most common pose is a full-frontal, expressionless stare, sometimes with the two Syrian stars behind him. Always in a suit, he's sometimes smiling and raising his hand in a wave or assuming a relaxed, chilled out air, or even looking off to his left or right as if his attention had been momentarily distracted. On one occasion, I have seen him represented praying. Even though a secular-militarist state, it's no doubt wise for him to remind the Islamically sceptical of his piety.

As I walked through the centre of Deir Ez-Zur in search of an internet cafe I happened to turn round and see from an area I'd just been in moments before black smoke billowing from a roof beside a mosque. Gradually, the people in the streets took more and more notice. There having been no explosion, everyone assumed it wasn't that serious, even though it certainly looked dramatic. Along with a few other opportunists I voyeuristically preyed on the scene with my camera and walked closer to the scene, as the streets grew ever more crowded and noisy. Pretty quickly a fire truck arrived. A problem was that the door that led to the scene of the fire was locked and chained so the firemen had to force the door with an axe. The street's chorus exploded into cheers when they succeeded. Oddly enough, however, I'd noticed that by this time the smoke had stopped billowing so I've no idea what happened to the fire.

40Km from Iraq

The following morning as I reached the bus station I was just able to squeeze onto a minibus heading for Deir-Ez Zur and paid only $1.5 for a journey at least twice as long as yesterday's. Also, I was over my illness though a dull and nameless ache, a stubborn low grade muscle contraction, as if I'd swallowed a small beach ball, remained and would do so for days.

Deir Ez Zur is south south west of Hassake and lies on the banks of the River Euphrates. Leaving Hassake, a mere 40km or so from the Iraqi border, I would never come as close to Iraq again. I'm sad that I wasn't able to get a picture of a road sign to Iraq to impress myself in later years, or who knows, maybe somebody else too.

As I understand it, three to four years ago vast numbers of trucks could be seen heading east to the border, taking food. Now no such eastward movement can be seen. Evidently, nowadays people only run away from Iraq. Actually, I met such a refugee in Qamishle who told me 'not to go to Iraq'. And there I was all looking forward to a scenic stroll though the charming gardens of Ancient Babylonia, Dammit.

Another church Stephen said I might find a room at being closed, I accepted directions to the nearest hotel, the moderately luxurious Hotel Ziad, where a remarkable conversation with the receptionist ensued. Here I was in Eastern Syria, 80 Km from Iraq, far, far from sovereign western territory (Iraq is Iraqi, if only officially), and I was not permitted to pay in the local currency. I had to use Dollars or Euros. If that is not bizarre, no bizarre thing is bizarre. I can only imagine he thought I must be some fat cat here on business (why else come to Deir-Ez Zur?), that I would obviously be walking around with only foreign currency at hand, not deigning to mix with the locals in such a way as to actually want to buy anything from them. Or maybe I'd just flown in on a private jet direct from the US or Europe? As it happened I did have the required 20 dollars so it was ok but I might not have had. Why should I have? I was staggered. Are we in Syria I asked him? I was stunned by the lack of Syrian patriotism it all suggested. No doubt I could have looked at it as a noble gesture of hospitality, if he'd allowed me to use western currency. But he was saying I had to pay in a hard currency, essentially that his own money was useless to him. Anyway, the room was excellent, the first properly clean and comfortable room I'd stayed in since Konya, so it fully justified the splurge.

Evening Street Children of Al-Hassake

Before I went to bed I strolled around the streets by night. Until about eleven pm Syrian shops are open and vital, bursting with colour and sound. The evening is an opportunity to get out and socialise, to leave the home. I saw as many people ambling around as intent on buying anything. After the shops close, until they open in the morning, however, all the streets are completely deserted. In the afternoons between one and four most shops are closed and most people inside. So, a rigidly defined sequencing of the day into unambiguously distinct phases. Different, then, from the increasingly twenty four hour, the-race-is-always-on culture found in much of the west -where the rise in sovereignty of distinct individual or microcosmic units over the universal patterns and rhythms of traditional society has contributed to the deconstruction of the feeling of a homogenous order to life- for good and ill.

So far, very few people (or should I say men) have spoken enough English to be able to converse with me much, though it's been apparent from their warmth and friendliness that they wanted to. Whereas Turks are more likely to ask immediately 'where are you from?', Syrians' first greeting is often 'welcome'. Yes, I would say Syrians are even warmer than the Turks on first meeting. Though by this I mean no slur to Sir Ottoman. Turks, even in the East, are more accustomed to seeing foreigners so will grow jaded with us more quickly. Also Turks, I suspect, have a stronger sense of not needing to impress foreigners, given their robust self-confidence and secure sense of standing in the world. They are also far more familiar with the rest of the world. Syrians, although sharing the universal Arabic self-esteem and pugnacity, are conscious that much of the world views them with considerable suspicion. They must feel the need and desire to reach out and make contacts with the foreigners that they see. Additionally, much of the world is isolated from them, so curiosity is the greater. Acquiring visas to travel, to the west at least, is very difficult. Even if possible, such travel is often far too expensive for people whose average salary is about 150 dollars a month.

So the people are great. But not, alas, or so far in my experience anyway, the children. On two separate occasions in Al-Hassake I was pursued by 'shoe polishers', boys with portable boxes they wanted to shine my shoes on. My pointing out I was wearing trainers, and pretty shabby ones at that, didn't dissuade them at all. Alas, it wasn't enough to say no politely as they continued to follow me, shout and laugh at me, walk in front of and into me, one boy even hitting my bag. Attempts to walk briskly away just encouraged them further, as did, even more so, my unwise transformation into someone visibly irritated and then cross. I imagined that they thought that because they were children and that I was not their parent or relative, and indeed foreign, that they could do anything to me and that I wouldn't challenge or control them. Of course they were right. Although the men in the streets tried to reprove them and sympathised with me, it was obvious ultimately that they were on their side in that if I treated the children as I was being treated by them their sympathy would vanish. I'd be execrated as an adult bully or worse. Not that I wanted to hound them of course. I just wanted them to stop.

Perhaps the situation might be even worse in Britain where children are often encouraged by the sometimes fanatically non-judgemental ambience of the adult world to conclude that aggression and general nastiness are fine. In saying this, however, I am not trying to occupy a 'Conservative' ground in the endlessly sterile debates on the question of the treatment of children. If I echo some of what they cultural conservatives say, so be it, I don't care. I do not blame children for imitating, in terms of disorderliness and irresponsibility, what is shown first to them by adults. Or for the wrongly for then wrongly concluding from adult indifference that behaving in rioutously ungracious ways is all well and dandy. I don't blame them, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to behave in this way or that they shouldn't be shown, preferably by love-centred reason and explanation, the consequences of their unpleasantness. If necessary a controlled dose of imitative reaction may regrettably be required if it is clear that the light of reason, or the willingness to be illuminated by it, is not on or active in their heads. The point is for them to know that they can't get away with behaving in barbaric ways, that the external world has rights of its own that will be imposed against them if they recklessly flout it. In my understanding this is not punishment, which I dislike in all spheres of life for its sclerotic, self-righteous pomposity and basic hypocrisy, it is instant karma, the world of calm and gentle people standing up against chaotic and thoughtless narcissism.

Ok, enough of that tangent and rapidly increasing tangle. Perhaps some will think I exaggerated the threat posed by these wee nippers. Ok, ok, for sure. But it was like being harrassed by monster flies and it was a pain, ok.

Al-Hassake

Despite feeling ill, due probably to the new bacteria and the quantity of food I was fed last night, I forced myself to walk around Qamishle, the most interesting area of which was the souq. Apart from this, and all the churches Stephen showed me, there doesn't seem to be much in Qamishle. Or if there is, I didn't see it. So I hung out a fair deal at the internet cafe, where I was surprised to meet two German girls, one of whom had a Syrian mother from this town. I think they were more surprised to see me, though.

Some advice for the lavatorially unadventurous. I have discovered that if avoiding the spartan squat regime is a keen concern, and you don't want to hang out at posh western hotels, check out the internet cafes. Competence with the English langauge is not the only quality of the technologically advanced; their internet cafes have a higher chance than most places of providing thrones. Are they a sign of 'progressiveness' then, amongst the hip and the young I wonder?

As it happens, while in China for three weeks, I worked hard to avoid indigenous toilets and was almost entirely successful. But the following year in India I had no choice but to succumb and conform. As may not surprise some, getting used to them is not that hard. Today in Eastern Turkey and Syria, it bothers me less and less. Still, that doesn't mean I won't jump at a throne if the chance arises. My problem with them has nothing to do with worries about hygiene, or any aversion to the possibly imagined indignity of the position, or the lack of paper, but the particular fact that I'm as unsupple as hell and have legs resenting anything even vaguely gymnastic. Even as a child, it was uncomfortable for me to sit cross- legged in school assembly and I've never been able to touch my toes. In my formerly Buddhist moments, it was painful to meditate in the customary position for more than half and hour and I couldn't get into the lotus position at all.

Anyway, enough of such grubby, yet relevant, subterranean matters. Onto something differently disagreeable. At lunchtime I walked to the bus stop Stephen had pointed out. Hot, ill, generally irritated, I knew that by paying eight dollars (400 Syrian pounds) for an eighty km journey to Al-Hassake I was being ripped off but didn't realise until later by quite how much. I just wanted to get on with it. I wanted to tell myself it was expensive because I was alone in the bus and that the journey was therefore private. But then he picked up other people going the same way and I saw them paying about 1 dollar each, or less. When he bought petrol, presumably filling the tank, he paid 3 dollars (150 S-pounds). Later someone confirmed I'd been overcharged eightfold.

I was annoyed, in fact I was angry for hours afterwards in one of those afternoon ruining ways. It wasn't just the money, although to a degree it was since I've been trying to travel on a budget, considering that I'm not earning but only haemoragging money. I was angry for having been a mug. But also I was angry that he had deliberatly exploited and overcharged me because I am a foreigner; because he thought (correctly in this case) that he could get away with it, given my ignorance of market values. Can it not understandably be thought that such treatment, is not only inhospitable but racist?

Hey, hey, ok, ok, I'll hold my horses. I suppose, on the other hand I can't blame him for trying, given that Syrians earn so little and that what must look like Walking Gold Mines don't come waltzing into dusty Syrian towns everyday. He was not to know I was expecting to pay what the locals do, or that my Mine is humble (questions of relativity aside). Formal economic thought about the free wheeling market would no doubt spring to his defence thus: 'You asked for a price, he offered you one and you were free to turn it down or argue the price down. In fact I did - he wanted 500 S.pounds originally. In addition, it is the responsibility of both sides to be informed about correct market prices.' That's the thing about economic logic. Its impregnability, its inviolability, is as pronounced as its inhumanity.

His punishing me for my ignorance and exploiting the fact of the limited transport alternatives to Hassake, barring taxis, didn't charm me, in any case. I felt I'd been treated as an object - which is precisely how he had treated me..and with a smile on his face, too. Still, I know I can't personally blame him that much. The economic system, of which he and I inescapably form a part, objectifies everything everywhere so what's so different about me and now. Expecting human feelings to enter the dynamic of money is naieve, no doubt. And less loftily, I'm not stupid enough not to realise that many all over the world would also have wanted to 'take me for a ride' in more senses than one.

In Al -Hassake I took a taxi, unripped off, keen to have learnt my lesson, to the church of the Assyrian Orthodox Archbishop, Stephen's friend. Not being in, I tried to find a hotel.

I hadn't expected Syria to be the first place yet where I'd have trouble finding a room. After two failed attempts I finally found a room with the help of a Kurdish taxi driver who made a point of expressing, while smiling, his opinion of Arabs, whom he considers stupid.

As in my previous pad, I got a refrigerator, along with a TV, this time with BBC World! Yet again as in the last place, although I had these luxuries I didn't have a private bathroom - not that I really care about them. Air conditioning is always the only really important thing. Next in importance, because of my length, is the bed, that its long enough and not blocked by anything at the feet end.

Al-Hassake is bigger and more Kurdish than Qamishle, but it also has quite a few churches. Again, with no guide book, no tourist infrastructure, and little on wikipedia about the town, I didn't find much. It had a larger souq, however, where I got my now ripping Urfean trousers sewn up by a very Caucasian looking guy, more accustomed to mending shoes. I also bought another pair of trousers -stylish, dark blue, a little on the long side but comfortable. I needed to because I saw no men wearing shorts and I didn't want to offend anyone unnecessarily. Stephen had said it would be ok, but I still felt, wrongly or rightly, that I would feel awkward if I wore my shorts.

Regarding clothes, all the women I saw, except the Germans, were totally covered, except for their hands and face. A striking act of defiance against the logic of the sun, commendable at least for its resolve. None of the women seemed approachable for a chat, nor did any approach me (except some to beg for money); nor did any smile at me and I got the message, as I'd already gathered from my reading, that Islamic women in the Arabic sphere do not expect to have to interact with random men such as I. Not that I minded though. I was hardly here for the women. In ways moreover it's intriguing to experience the often gentle machismo of the men-only social scene. Perhaps things would be different in Damascus, or further west.

His siesta now over I thought I'd try and visit the Archbishop even though it was now too late to stay. But then, I'd suspected Stephen's idea of the openness of the Church to guests might have been different from the reality. After a short wait, I was ushered into his large study by his assistant. The Archbishop, in long black robes, was wearing a large black egg shaped hat. He was working at his laptop. Welcoming me warmly and motioning me to sit I felt I had to justify my presence, especially since he seemed busy. So I told him about Stephen, whose name he smiled at and was pleased to hear about. I wasn't sure what else to say, realising suddenly I'd come for no reason at all. Luckily, he took the initiative and asked chatty questions about my life and trip. Certainly, a numinous graciousness collected around him. It was impressive how I felt he was giving me his full attention while simultaneously working on his computer and receiving messages from his assistant. Suddenly, an English woman walked in. Like I, she was also 'from' Cambridge, though she was a student, here on her holiday in Al-Hassake to teach Assyrian children English.

Sensing, rightly or wrongly, that I should go, I mentioned as he walked me to the door that my brother is a vicar in The Anglican Church and that my Grandfather was a Bishop. He smiled and said he'd been a guest of Lambeth palace a couple of years ago. Its not everyday you get to exchange Ecclesiastical gossip with an Archbishop, especially in the desert lands of the Middle East.

Qamishle

The hotel the taxi driver took me to had air con, a colour TV and most surprisingly a plug in the basin. This latter item meant I wouldn't need, when washing my clothes, to kneel beside a washing bowl and get sore knees. So that was great. Overall a reasurring landing in the Arabic sphere, then.

I say Arabic because Syria is officially an Arab Republic. But what does 'Arab' mean? As I understand it, an Arab is one or more of three things: someone descended from the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula (including, so it is said, the descendents of the Biblical Ishmael); someone who speaks Arabic as a first language and has grown up in an Arabic society; or someone who not only speaks Arabic and lives in an Arabic culture but considers themselves ethnically and culturally Arab. Since this third definition embraces subjective feelings -surely fundamental in any assessment of identity- this is the one I prefer.

While Syria is 70% Arabic, Qamishle is 60% non-Arabic, mainly Assyrian and Armenian, but also Kurdish. Many of the current Assyrian-Armenian population used to live in Turkey but were forced to migrate south in the 1920s and 30s by the Turkish policy of population transfer, a policy controversially (to the Turks) considered by the relatives of those affected to have embraced genocide.

Before I arrived I hadn't realised any of this. I just thought there were Kurds in north-eastern Syria, that the rest of the country was Arabic and that the Armenian genocide* had affected only regions in Turkey. I wasn't even aware of any Assyrian genocide*. Indeed, I didn't even know 'Assyrians' existed. I'd thought they'd gone out of fashion with the Babylonians. Silly old ignorant me.

All this was explained to me just hours after arriving in Qamishle by the incontestably remarkable Stephen. A half Irish, half Armenian Christian tour guide from Damascus. Commanding my attention just seconds after I left my hotel to explore, I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon following him, or rather being marched, around town as he showed me where I could get my bus to Al-Hassake tomorrow. Then he took me for tea with a doctor friend at the local hospital. Assertive and ebullient, forceful and familiar, Stephen was very kind and friendly but in a way I couldn't help find overwhelming. He took a special interest in asking me about my planned itinerary in Syria, and recommended specific hotels in Hama and Aleppo, writing out vouchers in his name so I could get a discount, as well as saying I could stay with his friend, the Assyrian Archbishop of Al-Hassake, when I said I planned to go there next.

While we drank tea he showed me how I should add a small amount of tap water to my mineral water bottles to slowly adjust my system to the local bacteria, though I thought I'd ignore that, fearing it wouldn't work.

Then he took me to a hotel owned by another friend of his, where he said I should have stayed. I had been overcharged by my hotel, in his view, (12 dollars), just as I had for my 2 dollar taxi from the border. He was precise in telling me how much I should pay for hotels and transport in Syria. Apparently, then, this was not a country where prices would be fixed and transparent, and though generally low, not reliably low. In Turkey you can be fleeced too, of course, but I had come to trust the people and acquired a sense of how much things should be. The numerals, as well, were recognisable there, which had helped. The impression Stephen gave was that Syrians shouldn't be trusted in this matter.

Guiltily, in the face of his kindness and interest, I wanted to be alone. I felt my head couldn't breathe because of his urgent comments and input. He also had this well-meaning yet somewhat irritating habit of sometimes not just touching but gently hitting me on the leg to command my attention when making a point. But I wanted to see him again and accept his invitation to eat later so we arranged to hook up at nine.

Wandering through streets that had only recently flooded with people and activity - Syrians being partial to the habit of siesta - I went for a tea in one of the tea houses. All male environments, high ceilinged and well-lit, men sit around tables on hard chairs, smoking, be that tobacco or the nargila, playing cards or backgammon, drinking only tea, coffee or Syrian produced soft drinks. I think I cut quite a noteworthy figure, hunched over my notebook, alone in this far eastern corner of their country.

Most of the men wore western clothes and didn't look very different to the Turks I'd left behind. Their energy levels, however, indeed the energy of the whole town, seemed one or two notches up on the dial. The contrast was not as great as that between Bulgaria and Turkey but it was noticeable. Perhaps it was most evident in the dialogue witnessed on the streets between cars, their horns and pedestrians. I don't know how many people get hit by cars each year in Syria, and I'm not sure I want to. Or maybe Syrians are so well accustomed to the barely regulated cacophony that they manage just fine. Memories of Cairo returned, memories supported by the incresed presence of dust and the dearth of western glossiness.

Some of the men were wearing the traditional bedouin costume of long white cloaks (the Jalabiyya) and red and white head gear (the Kuffeya). They looked rich and at least some of them were foreign, possibly from one of the gulf states. I knew they were foreign because some were staying at my hotel. Their passports, as well as mine, had been kept by the hotel manager. He showed them to me when I said I wanted mine back, indicating that his keeping it was normal. I'm not sure what he wanted to do with my passport but I presumed it was a police ruling regarding foreigners.

When I met up with Stephen I thought we'd be eating in the hotel of his friend but instead he took me for tea to the shop of a fellow Armenian, also an English speaker, though not as fluent. His father was the only member of his family to survive the Armenian genocide. He had hidden, as a five year old, under the body of his dead brother above him. Well, that's if I understood him correctly. Alot of the masssacring happened south of here, following death marches from Turkey. I forget this Armenian's name but I was glad he'd heard of his fellow countryman, Gurdjieff, one of the two important Armenians in my life (the other being Baret, a friend from University). I found it quaint that he referred to Muslims as 'Musselmen'.

Leaving Turkey I'd automatically supposed Syria would be more Islamic than Turkey. Overall, it probably is, despite also being a secular state in its constitution. Yet here I was, talking to Syrian Christians, after having only met Muslim Turks.

Stephen had frank opinions on many things, including Islam. To him, Islam is inferior to Christianity because of how it allows, if not encourages, Muslims to feel superior to what he called the 'other', especially in the context of marriage. A Christian can marry a Jew but if either wants to marry a Muslim they must convert to Islam (something which appears to be an officially irreversible act). He also interestingly told me that, in his opinion, the 'Archangel Gabriel', who according to Islam was the medium through whom the Koran was dictated to Muhammad, was in fact his real biological father. The man tradition says was his father, so Stephen alleged, was in fact impotent (I hope I remember the details correctly - it was a week ago now). Well, well, well. Presumably Muslims may take issue with this. Oddly enough he even said it was a 'secret teaching'. Finally, he said Muhammad was a very gifted student of religion, very well educated -unusually so for the Arabs of that time - who simply copied and adapted his ideas from Judaism and Christianity, contriving his own new faith. Jesus, on the other hand, was himself the Word of God itself, God himself. Stephen's Christian faith seemed sincere and deep.

Despite these controversial, potentially inflammatory remarks, there was not a hint of malice in Stephen as he spoke. Clearly he was no Islam-or-Arabophobe in his daily life, given his social effusiveness and the quantity of his friends.

Regarding the Turks, he thought theirs was a very noble culture, like the Persian. I suspected he would think Arabs were lower down on his list, though he didn't say anything derisory about them as such. He took objection when I reminded him that the Turks had massacred his Armenian countrymen. No, they hadn't he said. No they hadn't I questioned, eyebrows raised, wondering if I'd found an Armenian unethused by his own people (well, the non-Irish half). No, the Turkish policy was that the Armenians should leave the country. It was the Kurds who decided to kill the Armenians, and did the killing.

Obviously, I know nothing about the truth of any of this. I'm just reporting what he said. But I hadn't even heard about this accusation towards the Kurds before. Was this a widespread Armenian idea, or only his? I wonder what the Turks have to say about it. I suppose, perhaps, because they don't even recognise the existence of the Kurds in their constitution it might be tricky to say that the Kurds killed the Armenians to get off the hook themselves. Presumably its far less complicated to just say there was no genocide.

I was getting hungry; thirsty too. I hinted I'd like that meal we spoke about. Alas, instead, we wandered the streets for another hour, as he took me to two or three Armenian churches after I expressed surprise that there were such buildings here. Finally we got a felafel from a street siding vendor. Before long, after saying I needed to go to sleep (which was true), I agreed to stop briefly at a friend's house on our way back to the hotel. As it was, I was persuaded, happily as it turned out, to have a meal, in which I was served far, far too much lovely Assyrian food, for which I would be punished in the morning.

(*note: I say genocide because if I write that word with quotation marks or say 'alleged genocide' people will think I'm following the Turkish line of denial. Not being Turkish I have no reason to do this. Generally, in addition, I do not believe it's natural for people to make up stories about their relatives being slaughtered, whatever the political motivations of doing so may be. Also, I do not deny that the violence, no doubt, went in the other directions too)

Syria

After my bus to Nusaybin arrived, my first thoughts were of money. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office website had told me, startlingly, that I would find NO ATM's outside Damascus. Since I wouldn't be in Damascus for a while I had to get more money now before leaving the country. And I guessed (correctly as it turned out) that you can't change Turkish money in Syria. I was also inconvenienced by the fact that since it was a sunday - Turkey not being Islamic enough to shun the Constantinian contrivance - all the banks were closed. If I couldn't find a 'fly by night' currency trader I might have to wait until monday, or else reroute straight to Damascus, with the few dollars I had changed earlier.

Luckily, after withdrawing Turkish money, I found a place. A chaotic little room full of urgent people where I had to struggle hard not to freak out because of all the money flying around and my fear of either losing some or being ripped off. As it happens, I was ripped off, getting about 29 instead of 40 Syrian pounds for one Turkish Lira. I think, though, the rate may have been so bad because these currencies are not usually exchanged. Otherwise it was because they saw me coming, and I came. That said, the dollars I got were for a reasonable rate, so I'm not sure.

At the border, after getting my Turkish exit stamp, I was still uncertain I'd get through. I knew getting the exit stamp wouldn't matter if I couldn't since I had a multiple entry Turkish visa. Still, it would have looked strange to the Turks, returning so soon.

Crossing into the Syrian side, with the speech prepared by Oscar in hand, I quickly realised it would be useless. The Syrians spoke no Turkish, and no Turkish speakers were around. Anyway, after being ushered warmly into a soviet looking building and offered tea, I was soon introduced to the smiley Syrian who had been so impressed by me a few days ago, all because I am a teacher. Shortly, I was escorted into another room where I was seated opposite a very official looking senior officer, presumably in charge of the border checkpoint. If he had been scowling, or bereft of facial feature, instead of smiling and saying 'Welcome to Syria', I might have been worried.

Anyway, I had to wait while phonecalls were made and enquiries pursued. It was clear not many foreigners turn up at this isolated border, even fewer do without a visa. I had the distinct impression though they were just repeating the process they'd pursued the other day.

Yet again, fascination with my Christian name...and also with the names of my parents. Again, in their case, 'Michael' and 'Sylvia' were clearly adequate. Yet again, passionate confusion and questions about whether I was Irish becasue of the name of my country. I explained as best I could to the senior official, whose English was elementary but alive, that there is a bit of Ireland in the UK, but that that doesn't mean I'm Irish. It seemed this Irish perplexity was all that really worried them.

After paying fifty two dollars for the visa they let me go with more courtesies;..oh, after getting me to give all my details to yet another guy, a local police officer I think. I wrongly thought that might be it. As I strolled through customs I had my bag searched by an enormous man, also smiling and welcoming me. He asked me if I had anything 'unusual' in it. I panicked and wondered whether an old copy of 'Nuts' I'd acquired in Varna would count. Just tits and leg, and not even on most of the pages, but maybe it counts as pornography and would provoke his ire. As he picked it up I awkwardly explained that it was just a magazine and hoped he wouldn't see any nipple. When he did I said 'It's ok, you can have it if you like', supposing this might be a diplomatically crafty way of submitting to its confiscation. As it happens he said it was fine, stopped checking the bag and overlooked my smaller bag entirely before apologising(!)for searching at all.

Directed to the taxis and warned not to pay more than two dollars, I made my way to nearby Qamishle in search of lodgings.

Interview by the Tigris

In Hasankeyf bread comes in thick, enormous oval shapes. The cheese I had it with was unusually salty but the cucumber, tomato and mango fruit was typical for a Turkish breakfast, one which would prove to be my last.

As in Cappadocia, in Hasankeyf caves are built into the rock, a rock that is also Cappadocia's colour. These caves are effective for escaping the intense heat of day. Passing quite a few, I walked at high noon to the top of the ruins. I'm not sure I went where I was supposed to but I enjoyed going right to the edge of the sheer cliff and looking at Alfonso's restaurant 100m below. I was not aware of experiencing vertigo, but the more I wondered if I should be, the more I did. Happily unsuicidal, it was nonetheless a vivid moment - reflecting that I could be dead in less than a minute. Except when we drive, there are not that many moments in our ultra safe lives when we can say this (even if we try as we might to succumb to the fear-pummeling lusts of the architects of the war on an abstract noun).

During lunch, eaten in a cave with a raised carpeted area, I paused momentarily to film a group of dancing men in the valley beneath. Well, I say film - I used my Canon Powershot A530, with its broken shutter, in video mode.

I didn't use, then, the kind of elaborate device wielded by an American lady waving at me as I waked away. She was in town making a film about Hasankeyf and wondered if she could interview me, the first foreigner she'd met. I said yes and 90 minutes later, with a furry phallus in my face, we began.

Actually, we'd some time to chat before the film crew arrived about the forthcoming flooding. Apparently, last week, an agreement was finally signed stating that it would definitely go ahead. Until then I wasn't sure, and Alfonso had said he thought it would never happen. As I had thought, there are alternative possibilites to provide the same amount of water for the planned Hydroeolectricity plant. But clearly these are not as desirable to the Government. Perhaps this is why some Kurds think the flooding might be politically motivated. An anti-Kurdish move to sink a culturally significant Kurdish town. Another relevant issue is the unhappiness this redirecting of water from the Tigirs and Euphrates causes the Syrian and Iraqi Governments. An unhappiness that will presumably only increase. I optimistically expressed the idea that many of the soon-to-be-exiled residents might benefit from the move, remembering what the veiled teacher had said on the way to Siverek. The Film maker (Sakae Ishikawa, from New York) was sceptical, and had heard no expressions of enthusiasm from the locals she'd spoken to.

On camera, she got me to speak about these issues and asked how I'd heard of Hasankeyf, why I was here, and finally, what I thought of it overall. I don't think I was nervous as such (even though I have never been interviewed by professionals before), I think the problem was more that I was a bit pompous maybe. Or too exact and academic in my replies. I tried to be 'upbeat' and certainly I said nice things about Hasankeyf. But I'm not sure I cast that kind of a shiny, razzle-dazzle enthusiasm she might have been looking for, allied to a sufficently fraught sense of disdain about the planned submerging. And I think I was fumbling a bit too in my utterances. Who knows, maybe it was only I who thought it wasn't quite what she sought. It had been fun anyway, and made me feel sort of important for a while, which makes a change.

After signing the 'Your image is no longer yours' document, I left, emails exchanged, wondering if I'll ever get on PBS TV. Not that I really care of course, but I'll be wondering if she writes to me in a year or so to tell me I'll be on her documentary when it finally gets shown.

Oddly enough, just before we met up to do the interview I'd chatted with another filmer who I'd presumed was working with Sakae. In fact she works for the BBC and said she wanted a chat with me too, after I'd finished. As it happened though she'd disappeared by that time.

Carlos had spent the morning with the Swiss girls and was now sleeping at the river resaturant. Yes, it was tempting to join them but I know how grouchy I can get if I can't get some privacy in the evening hours, especially if there's loud revelry nearby. And what if my insomnia struck again? For that I need a light so I can read. I wasn't sure the moon would have been enough. So once again I left for the night after enjoying another excellent evening meal.

Still, the time spent at Alfonsos was definitely one of the best 'social' experiences I've had on my 2 month jaunt, probably the best. Travelling is magical the way it throws random people together in unusual settings, giving them something in common they'd otherwise lack. Unless I'd been introduced to Carlos and the girls in normal life in Europe I probably wouldn't even have talked to them. Even if we had talked, nothing might have come of it. Still, I'm not suggesting we're now best friends or anything. Usually I don't keep in touch with the people I meet, even when I try. I don't know how it is for other travellers but perhaps this is often the way of it...the lightness of the breeze that brings you together, forming connections on sheer arbitrariness and a common alienation from your surroundings, is not strong enough to survive in an ordinary milieu when far more selective criteria in friendship-making apply, when things like your personality and interests and, heaven forbid, your job and your income, that whole architecture of the settled life, become far more important and divisive.

Hasankeyf and The English

Hasankeyf is an ancient town of considerable Kurdish significance, just a few KM from the remarkably named town of 'Batman'. Set on the banks of the Tigris, its most striking feature is a sheer vertical cliff, on the top of which are a scattering of ruins. Beneath these, on the Tigris riverside itself, the most noteworthy feature of Hasankef life are to be found - a string of restaurants. What is striking about them is that the mats and cushions you sit on are on wooden platforms erected on stilts above the river flowing beneath. Unless you're happy to get your shoes wet (as I was), you must take them off to even get to your seat. If you like you may take your drinks seated at a table in the midst of the waters, as waiters, in some real life sketch from Monty Python, splash towards you with your order.

These restaurants presumably exist to serve the regular Turkish people coming here on holiday. Being in the less appealing Eastern-Turkish zone, thankfully it's not a place heavily promoted by processed tourism. That said, in Hasankeyf's case, such a promotion might be justified, were it to save it from the damwaters it's shortly to be under, courtesy of the need for electricity. It's surreal and daunting to accept that soon enough (seven years so it's said) the whole town will be submerged by water up to 6 metres from the top of the highest minaret. Only the anciet ruins will remain, no longer a mountainous promontory but an island.

I was staying in the same hostel as Carlos. We'd spoken of meeting up yesterday and travelling together but hadn't managed it. Two other Swiss girls, Olivia and Justine, had also arrived but managed to get round staying at the only hostel in town by striking a crafty deal with one of the river restaurants. Free accomodation beneath the stars, on the banks of the Tigris for the price of their evening meal. After a longish chat with Carlos about life and work and travel and London (where he'd lived in Hackney in 1999 near me in Islington) we walked down river and met the Swiss girls at their lucky abode. Alfonso, the manager, spoke excellent English, offered us drinks and suggested we also stay. Alas it was too late but we had drinks and at my suggestion all went for a swim. The Tigris looks very dirty and its flow can be very fierce. Even in the safer stretch Alfonso took us to, it was sometimes an effort to keep my balance. Swimming against the current was close to futile while swimming with it dramatic. I'd taken my shoes off, Justine was pleased to note, but then had to tackle the walking-on-hot coals phenonemon which, for me and my sensitive feet at least, walking on river stones reproduces, even in shallow water.

Carlos and I decided to stay for dinner, during which we were joined by a throng of happy Turks. I enjoyed a sublime chat and considerable laughter with the charming Justine. She also did something you rarely find - she complimented the English. She said they were funny, that that was good and that she really liked them. I told her she should read "Watching The English" by Katie Fox. In this book, this anthropologist notes correctly how the English, especially men, never fail to turn any conversation into an opportunity for humour. That for the English, not to have a sense of humour, is the cardinal sin. I suppose this is good in a way, though personally I've sometimes found it frustrating, given the implied injunction against depth repose that underlies so much of this laughter. Not for us the continental languishings in gentle observations over red wine and brie. Still, it was great to be from a race applauded for a change. Usually, we're just trashed for being loud, noisy drunken thugs, or sighed at for our obsession with foreign property. Actually, though, I find more often than not the trashers of the English are other English people - people like me. Our vigilant cpacacity for self-deprecation can sometimes get out of hand.

Oscar

Even though I'd spent two nights in Mardin I still hadn't properly looked around. As usual recently, I woke at about seven and walked along streets that were slowly, tentatively coming alive. I went to a cafe near the town's statue of Ataturk, where I sought some caffeine before climbing to the castle.

Oscar, who helped me order and chatted with me in near to fluent English, lives in Marmaris on the west coast. There, he is a dancer in a production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show and spends alot of time, by his own account, collecting western friends, usually female. With his broad, shiny smile and extrovert playfulness he cuts in the context of party-happy-hedonism what I imagine must be the exact opposite figure to the one I do. So, a touch of envy traced the lineage of my thoughts as I watched this self-declared alpha male in action.

Sometimes I feel that if everyone was as sunny and blithe as people like Oscar, far too interested in having a good time to worry about 'important' things like religion and politics, the world might be admirable after all. Perhaps this is actually the unconscious creed of alot of young people who despair of history's grand narratives - that is when they have energy enough to pause from ther hedonistic strivings. The incontestable innocence collecting around a lot of mindless hedonism in a way can give one hope. One might imagine Palestinians and Israelis, high on ecstasy, recognising one another's beauty in the arms of tribal elysium.

All well and good of course - but can such a decoupling from the world of conceptual thought and its legacy of millenia of mental empires really work, really last, long term. One suspects not. The downside of this reaching for 'party heaven' which has shaped so much of our western post 50s culture, is the fact that it's rooted in a flight from reality, an unashamed spirit of abandon that refuses to let the recognition of its own escapism get in the way of its golden sentiments. The answer, as usual, is some kind of synthesis. While retaining the innocent breadth of spirit, that wide oceanic openess that crowned the sixties and can still be found - despite its abandonment of philosophical articulation - we should not consider 'square' or 'dull' or 'uncool', or whatever mindless moniker the 'radically hip' thought police now uses, the rich legacies of our ancestors' thought systems. We are rooted in their soil and it is fantastical posturing to suppose we can be real people cut off from them. Without any tradition at all - not even to converse with, there is no originality, there is only childish bunny shadows. What is the branch if disconnected from the tree. Happy maybe to be free of the tree - but dead nonetheless. T.S Eliot, moi?

Oscar is only in Mardin for a day to get a driving licence cheaper and easier than he would back home. He claimed to have a soldier friend who could maybe, if I wanted, let me into the castle on the hill. This castle, as I only then learnt, was hidden behind barbed wire - a part of a military compound. He also very kindly helped translate a speech for me I was thinking I might have to make to the Syrians when I next returned to the border: reminding them I was there yesterday, that they had photocopied my passport and that I was there to collect my visa. Pretty simple really. He gave me an insight into the elaborate nature of Turkish when what he wrote was almost twice as long as my version. To be fair though he did add some extra detail I thought wouldn't be necessary, just to be clear.

Gratefully declining Oscar's offer of a possible military escort, I climbed as high as the barbed wire would allow. Presumably this military compound is a hangover from the Kurdish-Turkish troubles which visited Mardin in the late 90s.

After strolling languidly down I explored the lively bazaar which uses donkeys to carry around the goods it sells. Buying my daily Turkih paper, alas for the last time, I headed off for my bus to the soon to be flooded town of Hasankeyf.

Nusaybin

I left for Nusaybin after copying my photos onto CDd's for the second time this trip. I have taken about 1,200 photos so far. I also got some passport photos taken as I'd read the Syrians might need two for the visa. Oddly enough, getting ten made (for eight lira) was only two lira more expesive than getting six made, and it was not possible to get just two or three.

On the way to Mardin the bus spent quite along time driving along the border. I was surprised to see how militarised it was, with a wire fence and sentry posts cutting through the semi-desert. I hadn't thought it would be so fortified. Was this a legacy of Turkish suspicions from when Syria was supported by the USSR, or a reflection of Turkish wariness at its current authoritarian, military regime. Or maybe the fence is Syrian? As far as I know, a dispute is ongoing over the land around Antakya (ancient Antioch) to the west. Is that enough to justify this excessiveness? Maybe its meant to divide the Kurds, too.

When I arrived in Nusaybin I was directed towards the border, thankfully only about 200m away. At the first Turkish checkpoint I was able to ask an English speaker to enquire if I could get a visa. The immediate response, as I feared it might be, was that I neeeded to go to the Syrian consulate in Antep 300 km to the west. I asked if she was sure, since I knew this whole visa question was fraught with uncertainty and conflicting accounts. I was ready to lean on the fact I'd been living in Slovakia for the past few years, something I could even prove. Slovakia, I was sure, had no Syrian Embassy, so maybe they'd let me in after all. She said that she didn't know. After saying a few words to the official, I was waved through to Syria. It was not their problem after all. Their job was to get rid of me, not enable my entry to another land.

As I walked the 150 m towards the final checkpoint, I imagined feeling how in a more intense place and time I might be shot at for trying to cross a border without the proper papers.

Since I didn't want to leave the country today, I knew I shouldn't get a Turkish exit stamp, so I walked past Turkish passport control and managed to get a Turkish police officer to understand I needed a Syrian visa. I walked over to the Syrian policeman that he pointed at. Young, moustached and Arab-looking, at first, flicking through my passport, he looked worried and shook his head. Then, luckily enough, the same lady who'd helped me earlier explained my situation. He took my passport (!) and crossed back into the Syrian side behind the dividing iron gate. So it seemed, there was hope and he had gone to photocopy and fax my passport page and make enquiries about a visa. Up to now I'd basically thought it would be a no go and that I was only making sure. This was the first time I realised, shit, this might actually work. So much for Georgia and Armenia, a part of my heart plaintively sighed.

Another rather plump, very smiley Syrian appeared, his superior I presumed. He was confused by my passport. He seemed to think my name was 'Jonathan Mark'. Well, that's a part of it, but I supposed he thought that was my surname, so I stressed, no, my family name is 'Tillotson'. I'm not sure he understood. Then he asked what my Father and Mother's names were, though again was more interested in their first names than Tillotson. He was also unsure about the 'Ireland' section of 'and Northern Ireland' at the end of the absurdly long, official name of my country. He seemed to think I might be Irish. My saying I was English or British didn't clarify matters much, perhaps because there is no mention of 'England' in the country's name, only something called 'Great Britain'. What then was the 'United Kingdom' bit, they might have been thinking. Finally, he managed to get me to understand that he wanted to know my profession by saying 'work?'. When I said teacher he beamed with an enormous smile and recoiled as if very impressed. He then disappeared and about 10 minutes later returned with my passport and told me I could come to Syria whenever I wanted, even today if I'd like.

Back at the first checkpoint a Turkish soldier asked to see my passport. I tried to explain I hadn't come from Syria and so wouldn't have a Turkish entry stamp. Not sure if he understood or not, but I was shortly let through into Nusaybin.

Slightly elated at this turn of events I thought I might as well prepare as soon as possible, so went to a bank to change some money. The bank couldn't give me any Syrian money, only Euros or dollars. Luckily a Woman told me dollars are good in Syria, not Euros. I didn't know then if you could change Turkish money in Syria, so thought I'd better have some dollars. Curious isn't it, that the dollar is the international currency of choice in a country maligned as a state sponsorer of terrorism by the US Government. Presumably this is becasue oil is sold in dollars, and that money trumps politics, especially if you are demeaned by a superpower against whom you are powerless.

Very charmingly I was offered some tea as I waited for the man who dealt with currency exchange to return from lunch. Never before have I been offered a tea in a bank, well except by the ones I've taught in in Slovakia. Well, there was that time I was 17 and a girl at the Alliance and Leicester asked me if there was anything else I wanted. I said 'Well, I'll have a black coffee if you're offering' at which my friends Tim and Robin burst into embarrassed laughter. I'm not sure she understood me, and looked slightly puzzled.

Back at Mardin I bought Todays Zaman again and took tea on the roof of another of the expensive boutique hotels. Before turning in I met Carlos, a Spaniard who'd just arrived at the inglorious Otel Baskan and was sleeping on the roof. Oddly enough I'd never seem him before, but he had seen me twice, both at the Karadut pension and while I was swimming in the pool with the Aussie girls in Goreme. Well, I've never been the most observant of people. Well, maybe of some things, but evidently not of Spaniards.

Yazidis and The Syrian Question

The next morning I walked along another section of the walls. This time I was called up to by young men swimming in pools directly beneath. Did one of them encourage me to jump? No idea, but it felt like a nice idea, even though I'd probably have killed myself, given the water's depth.

Ater walking through and getting lost in a labyrinth of old streets I was let into an old Chaldean Church by the local caretaker. Only 50 Christian families live in Diyarbakir and the ones descended from Babylonians worship here. I asked him if there were any Yazidis in town, but he said no - they are further south, in Mardin. The Yazidis' Peacock worshipping belief in the control of the world by seven archangels seems intriguingly gnostic to me, a sign of a refined sensibility to the complexity of the cosmos. Alas, such ancient subtlety provokes some to think them 'devil worshippers'; it was people drawn from this group who only two weeks ago suffered 572 murders at the hands of suicide bombers in the North Western Iraqi town of Qahtaniya in the biggest car bomb attack since the beginning of the insurgency.

The Armenian church being locked, I decided to call it a day for Diyarbakir and head to the ancient Assyrian-Christian town of Mardin. More multi-cultural than Diyarbakir it is set in a commanding position beneath a castle overlooking pale yellow fields of the Mesopotamian plain stretching south to Syria. Only 30 km from the border, it was hard to know, sipping a turkish cofee, stunned by the beauty of the view, if I could see Syria itself. Later, as I chatted with an aimiable customs officer who bought me a tea, the idea began to form that I might as well try to get a Syrian visa at the nearby border town of Nusaybin.

As I thought this I knew the chances would be low. By all accounts only people from countries that don't have Syrian embassies in their home countries can apply for visas at the border. I knew I'd probably get a visa if I tailed back to Antep or went all the way to Ankara but I didn't want to do this, perhaps because in truth I didn't want to go to Syria that badly. My default plan was still to explore the deep south east and then head up via Van, Ararat and Kars to Georgia and from there to Armenia. As I went to bed though I thought I'd give it a try. I knew I still definitely wanted to go to Hasankeyf, 100k to the north, so even if I could get the visa I'd leave my entry for a couple of days. So, tomorrow I'd leave my bag in Mardin and go 57km south and see if I could get one. If I couldn't, as I suspected I wouldn't, I'd still get to see the border and perhaps a picture of Bashar. I'd then go to Hasankeyf, from there east to Sirnak and Hakkari. If I could, however, I'd return to bag and Hasankeyf, from there returning south to Nusaybin and crossing over into into the adjoining Syrian town of Qamishle.

Plan in hand I wandered along the Yeni Yol, the street running to the south of Mardin, just after buying a copy of the English speaking paper, 'Today's Zaman'. An informative newspaper about Turkish affairs it had not been available in many cities, though I'd found one in Konya. Then, after my most expensive meal in awhile in a boutique restaurant (about 12 euros) I retired to my very dingy room in a hotel that didn't have a shower.

Carpets and Insomnia in a Kurdish Heartland.

In Diyarbakir I had my third proper chat with a carpet salesman. The first two were in Konya and Goreme. Love them or not they cannot easily be evaded. If a well spoken Turk, or in Diyarbakir, Kurd, comes up to you in a street and is friendly beyond cursory greetings, the chances are carpets are in his eyes. Naturally this can provide ample fodder for cynicism. But if you get past that, these meetings can provide good opportunity to get to know someone over a tea, learn about carpets and, if you ask questions, any other matter of the local culture you like.

On each occasion I made a point of stating clearly at the beginning that I wasn't going to buy a carpet. Since my lack of ambiguity didn't discourage them I went with the flow, feeling they'd been properly warned. Clearly, they had time on their hands, or perhaps foolishly thought I was deceiving myself. Perhaps they also wanted to practice their English.

That was cetainly the case with my Kurdish salesman who had studied in Cyprus and before taking me to his emporium showed me the main 900 year old mosque, which used to be a Byzantyine church. He was very jolly. Before long, sipping tea with he and his brother, while carpets were laid out before me, I directed the conversation to politics. 90% of the people in this town are Kurdish and this city used to be a refuge from the fighting between the military and the PKK. They told me they hoped there would one day be an independent Kurdistan, but didn't seem to understand when I said I didn't think the Turks and the other countries with Kurdish minorities would allow that, that it might only be confined to Iraq. He agreed that the present Government had been nicer to the Kurds than previous regimes, and said things were much better than they were.

The carpets were excellent, no doubt, but what would I do with a carpet? As I said when a salesman in Istanbul asked me why I didnt want a carpet, I replied 'because I haven't got a floor.' I also worry I'd just damage a carpet in my bag.

To my surprise I managed to get my DVD player fixed in only one hour. Still it's not fully restored, as the main speakers don't work and I can only hear through one headpiece of my headphones. Nevertheless, that's enough to keep it. I still haven't seen all of the animated 'Hercules' I bought in Greece.

Before being absorbed for an evening's entertainment in the arms of the internet I walked around a section of the high city walls. Fully circling the city and 6km, they are said to be the next longest to the Great Wall of China. Having both seen, and cycled around the top of, the walls in Xian, China, I can't easily accept this. Certainly the walls in Xian are thicker and generally more impressive. Nevertheless, Diyarbakir's are pretty impressive anyway, as are the views they give of the city and surrounding countryside if you climb to the top.

Walking along a 1km stretch, 10 metres above ground, numerous groups of children called up crying 'Hello, hello' in that innocent, almost meaningless persistence only children can perfect. Sometimes they added 'money, money', which clearly had more purpose. Trying to reach them on their level I took to answering back saying 'mony, money' in reply, which drove them wild.

In the evening, an insomniac, I watched 'Singing in The Rain'. I loved the flirtatiousness between Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds but apart from that the only great moment was the famous dancing scene with the umbrella. As is often the case with me and films, the actual stories can mean the least.

Journey to Diyarbakir

My bag was strapped to the roof of the minibus that took me to Siverik. I decided to trust it had been tied on correctly and that I'd closed all the zips. It made me feel adventurous looking out at the shadow of my bag on the road as it bumped along beside us.

On the journey I talked to a female Turkish English teacher whose name I've forgotten. She was from a small town nr Istanbul, spending a few months, as all teachers from the West must, in the Eastern regions - in her case Siverik. She was friendly and I couldn't resist politely asking about her headscarf. It only covered her head, like most headscarfs in Turkey, so she didn't have a veil covering her mouth, face or eyes. I already knew headscarfs are not permitted in schools and Government buidings because of the enduring Ataturk ruling. She wasn't happy about this but could do nothing about it. She likes to wear her scarf and at school feels different and uncomfortable without it. At home, however, she takes it off. Herein lies the explanation for her wearing it, or so it seems. The veil forms a kind of portable wall between the public and private domains of her existence. At home with her husband and kids, and presumably close family, it is not worn - and joyfully so - but in publıc it is, and happily so. I suppose then, by not being allowed to wear it while she teaches, indeed anywhere on the school premises, she must feel as though her private existence had been impinged upon by the world, as if she'd been caught somehow naked. I am speculating you understand.

As for why "the veil" (the hijab, be that mere headscarf or headscarf plus facial cloak) exists at all, though, why there is a need for it. Hmmmmm. I can only imagine it's because the societies that embrace it deem men far too lustful and lascivious, too uncontrollable to be trusted not to pounce and devour any non-familial woman not already in their possession if her wonderful and sumptious hair, and possibly her face and eyes as well, are not obscured from the rapacious male gaze.

I am trying to work out, however, if the veil culture in the Islamic world -varied as that culture is- might actually be more derogatory towards men than towards women. Maybe it is. Ok, the women are the ones who have to wear hijab - or else face the possibility of anything from social rejection to an honour killing. But it's the men who are considered so lacking in poise and sophistication, so incapable of self-control, so internally unmotivated to treat a woman kindly and with respect, that they cannot be permitted to see half of the human race except under the cover of a sometimes all enveloping fabric.

Am I against the hijab, as it were? Well, I'm not going to wear one in a hurry iof that's what you mean? I'm pretty sure I'd say this if I were a woman, too. I can only imagine that even in a relatively cool climate such as Europe's it must get pretty sweaty and uncomfortable within. I'd rather not imagine what it's like in places where you can die of heatstroke just by dressing lightly. I asked my Turkish friend this. Isn't it sweaty? She said no. Really I thought? Maybe she's got used to it. Then she pointed at my cap and said 'It's just like that, it protects you from the sun'. Fair cop I thought. But on later reflection I knew there must be a difference. I wear my cap only to keep the sun's rays from my eyes (courtesy of the marvellous extended flappy thing) and besides I can take it off whenever I want. I can't believe hijab helps much against the sun's heat. And we know that isn't why it exists or its wearing is enforced anyway.

It was interesting how when I asked her why she wears it she replied 'because I believe in God.' I found the logic hard to follow but I didn't let on. I was looking for a rational explanation, something that would make sense more than the mere assertion of an unexplained command.

Actually I might sound mocking but honestly it doesn't bother me at all. It makes no difference to me. The scarfs and veils have even become interesting to look at all. They make a change. A break from Slavic hairstyles for sure (much as I love them:)). As long as women want to wear hijab, why shouldn't they? Ahhhh, and there's the rub, Sherlock. Do they? And if they say 'yes' how do we know that isn't becasue they've been brainwashed by a patriarchal, oppressive society which from birth was impossible to resist.

But you can't second guess people's psychic integrity in this matter. Otherwise you might just open the way for the imposıtion of your own alternative oppression (such as our modern liberal fascism and extreme feminism do in their smugly triumphant and comforting wars against everything traditional).

Surely one just has to hope that if they say they like to wear the veil they mean it. And if they really do, well, what can you legitimately do but be baffled?

On our way east to Siverik we had to stop and cross the Ataturk Dam by ferryboat. The building of the Atarturk Dam was the attempt, largely succesful in its aims, to flood large tracts of Turkish lands to provide water for irrigation and to increase Turkey's Hydro-electricity output by syphoning off water from the Tigris and Euphrates. While we waited for the boat my Headscarved friend explained how the Turkish Government had been quite generous in compensating those kicked off their land. Actually some people have now become much richer than they were before, from the cotton and other crops they can now farm and sell. The dam building scheme (the Southern Anatolian Project) is still ongoing and looks set to flood under 90m of water the ancient, wondrous Kurdish town of Hasankeyf further to the east despite protests from the local population.

As we waited for the ferry to leave I judged I'd time for a piss. Asking where the WC was I deliberately strode towards it, knowing I didn't have long. The stone under my left foot gave way and suddenly, as if by magic, I was on my butt clutching my left shoulder. My left hand had received the full brunt of the fall's force. After crying 'Fuck' very loudly' I worried my shoulder might be disconnected. About five men quickly surrounded me and were very helpful. I pointed over at the boat, concerned it would leave and felt a strong wave of nausea. One of my helpers sensed my primary worry and indicated I should raise my arm. Since I didn't writhe and shriek in panicing agony I was clearly going to be ok. They let me go. After my piss I staggered to the boat, feeling confused, unsure why the fall should have made me nauseous.

In Siverik I changed buses. After a maniacal taxi ride from the station in Diyarbakir, I was glad to check into the first hotel I found. Quickly reviving, I set out for yet another kebab and too much bread.