Captain Libya and I got up early, packed up our gear and headed into the business district of Damascus to locate the Ministry of the Interior. Nick met us halfway, just outside the National Museum, and together we set out to unravel the mystery of the location of the bureaucratic temple in question.
Locating anything in an Arabic country is a mission for several reasons. To begin with, there are no street signs anywhere and what signs there are usually happen to be written in Arabic, unsurprisingly. It's my own damn fault for not knowing their language. Also, Arabs are by nature a very helpful people, the Syrians especially, and therefore they would never dream of telling you that they don't know where something is. It's bad hospitality to not give directions, so they always tell you where to go, even if it's completely the wrong way. Several such helpful pedestrians had us tramping around and around the main roundabout at the edge of the government/diplomatic district. The street we were looking for, depending on who we asked, was either east, north, west, south or didn't exist. At the Goethe Institute, the receptionist spoke only Arabic and German. Again, my fault. I shouldn't have assumed with typical Western arrogance that anyone representing a Western European nation would speak English. We eventually saw, in the distance, perched behind a stand of trees like a hidden house of worship, the only place where we were guaranteed answers. The Sheraton. Surely within the hallowed five-star walls of this bastion of taste and multilingual staff resided at least one individual who knew the location of the Ministry of the Interior. We walked through the trees that separated the pristine white walls from the grubby gazes of the proletariat, surprised a gardener by acknowledging him with a smile, something he clearly wasn't used to from the upmarket clientele, and I entered the lobby through sliding doors that, as I crossed the threshhold, seemed to whisper "Welcome" to me in a solicitously sensuous fashion. The guard at the metal detector took one look at my hair and beard and waved me through.
I located the Travel & Tourism desk. The man on the other side of it smoked in what I can only describe as a louche manner. He had a ponytail, a shirt left open low enough to reveal the mandatory tuft of chest hair and a gold bracelet that winked at me at the same time that he did. I sat down. He got off the phone at a leisurely pace. He dragged on his cigarette and eyed me wolfishly. I asked about the Minstry of the Interior. His reply sank my heart like my brother used to sink my battleship.
"Which one?"
"There's more than one Ministry of the Interior? How many interiors does Syria have?"
My sarcasm was neither acknowledged nor appreciated.
"You have map?"
I went outside to get the map of Damascus from CL. He and Nick were standing in the shade, chatting happily and getting the fish-eye from the security guard. I re-entered the lobby through the sliding doors.
"Welcome," whispered the doors.
I returned to the desk. The guy showed me where the two ministries were. One was a ten minute walk. The other was on the other side of Damascus and, as he told me, was probably not the one I wanted. I explained that we wanted to go to the village of Qunetra. He had no idea which ministry we needed. I slunk out. The Sheraton had failed me. Its pristine walls and tastefully landscaped gardens were a fraud.
"Welcome," whispered the doors ironically as I left.
CL, Nick and I walked up the length of the street the guy had marked and we found nothing. Time was passing. It would take us a good hour or so to make it to Qunetra. The day was warming itself towards the noon crescendo. We were sweaty, lost and exasperated. In the style of most sweaty, lost, exasperated men in a foreign land, we decided that surely the lack of a permission slip could be overcome by a stylishly distributed item of hard currency. This was to prove a futile and disastrous decision for which I take my fair share of blame.
We set off for the Baramke bus garage, the patch of asphalt underneath the flyover in east Damascus from which most minibuses depart. We asked a pedestrian for directions.
"Where is Baramke garage?" CL asked.
"You need a bus?" the pedestrian replied. Of course, we didn't here the inflection of the question mark, so it sounded like "You need a bus."
"Where from?" CL asked.
The pedestrian looked understandably puzzled. "Where to?" he asked.
"Baramke garage." CL said.
"Where to?" the pedestrian asked.
I was getting an Abbott & Costello feeling. We walked up the ramp to the main road and flagged down a minibus.
"Baramke garage?" I asked.
The driver pointed at the floor, usually the signal for us to get in.
"Hey guys," I called to CL and Nick. "This guy's going to Baramke."
We climbed into the minibus. The driver stared at us like we were lepers.
"Baramke?" I asked again. The driver repeated his motion. CL made the "let's go" motion. The driver looked perplexed.
"Baramke," the driver said, pointing to the floor.
Nick, CL and I all said "Baramke!" in unison and nodded.
The four of us shared a pregnant pause. Then, somewhere distant, perhaps behind the amygdala, a very small, dim light bulb switched itself on.
"Is this Baramke?" I asked, pointing to the pavement outside the minibus.
"Baramke, Baramke," the driver said in relief, pointing to the pavement.
We descended from the bus, suitably shamed by our idiocy. We asked the driver for the bus to Qunetra. He told us to go to the ashpalt lot beneath the flyover. We did. Down there, another guy sent us back up the ramp. This repeated itself a couple of times until eventually CL shouted to Nick and I and motioned wildly.
"This guy goes to Qunetra!"
We were on our way.
The minibus actually stopped a few kilometres from Qunetra and we had to change. The new bus was waved over by a police checkpoint. By checkpoint, I mean a bench under a tree by the side of the road. By police, I mean a guy in black jeans and a shirt half-unbuttoned idly carrying a semi-automatic weapon.
"Permission?" the guy said, hand outstretched.
The time had come to play the game of Stupid Tourist.
"What?" I asked.
"Permission," he said.
We handed him our passports. He looked at them, turned them over in his hand and then asked for our permission again.
"You speak English?" I asked him.
He nodded.
"What permission?" I asked.
"Permission," he said, nodding.
I was getting that Abbott & Costello feeling again.
"We need permission?" I said, righteously surprised as only someone clearly lying can be.
He nodded and nonchalantly adjusted his gun on his shoulder. I swallowed. Gulp. We persisted with our claims that we had no idea we needed permission. The guy walked off, called someone, came back.
"Permission," he said again. This was going nowhere.
"Can we go without permission?" I asked.
He looked at me like I'd just sneezed out a leprechaun. I repeated my question. He shook his head. I persisted. He told us to get out of the minibus. We did. The bus drove off. He went and sat down on the bench, took out some sunflower seeds and started to crack and spit.
"Can we go to Qunetra?" CL asked.
He shook his head. Crack. Spit.
"Please?" asked Nick.
Shake. Crack. Spit.
Eventually he stopped acknowledging our presence and just cracked and spat. We crossed the street and waited for a bus back to Damascus.
Upon our return, CL and I made a beeline for the souk. We stopped off at a packed ice cream parlour and had two gigantic cones of vanilla ice cream coated in pistachios. It was pure hedonism.
As we walked through the crowd towards my crackgammon buddies, my moaning in between slurps of ice cream got me several filthy looks. CL wanted a real backgammon set and I figured that only the old men would be able to get us a good price. On the way, we stopped off at a shop just to get an idea of the price. The guy showed us a selection of boards and the cheapest one started at 4500 Syrian (60 euros). When we turned to leave the price dropped to 3500. We kept walking. Akram and Bashar took us to a shop around the corner. As soon as Bashar walked in, the shopkeeper came out, salaamed, took his hand and listened intently as Bashar informed him that CL and I were visiting backgammon dignitaries and wanted a really good board for a really good price. With no negotiations, CL walked out ten minutes later with a beautiful board for 1500 Syrian. We promptly retired to the khan for tea and gammon. CL used the power of the new board to whip me good and proper. My losing streak continued over the ensuing hours and through gallons of tea. At one point, Akram simply cried "WHY?", dropped the mouthpiece of his argileh pipe in disgust and retired to his store for half an hour. When he came back he immediately began helping me with my game.
"Mike, you played so beautifully before. What happened?" The outrage in his voice was almost comical. My opponent made a bad move and, distracted, I missed the countermove. My opponent sat on one of my pieces.
"NO!" cried Akram, jumping up. "We do not accept!" He moved the guy's piece back and corrected my previous move. I told Akram I didn't mind losing if I missed a move. He wagged his finger at me passionately. "We do not accept!" he said again firmly. I dutifully did my move over with the requisite correction. I still lost.
We said our goodbyes to the old men in the courtyard. Akram, Bashar and I shared a moment together. I felt very strongly that they had really taught me something about backgammon. Their welcoming nature and willingness to share their time and their tea with me had somehow gotten to me in a very short space of time. Bassam demanded that we all have a picture together. They gathered neatly into a row and I dived in front of them, beaming and with my arms spread wide. Akram elicited a promise from me to send him the picture. He gave me his card with his email address. We shook hands and shared a moment. As CL and I headed back into the heaving good-natured mess of the souk, they stood in the courtyard, waving until we rounded the corner.
Nick, CL and I got back to Ammar's apartment at about 18:00. We packed, locked up and went to the Shahbandar Palace to return the keys and thanks Ammar. He accepted the keys and told me it was a pleasure to meet me.
"The pleasure was all mine," I said. "Thank you so much, really."
Ammar made a pained face. "Stop thanking me," he said. "This is how we do things."
We shook hands warmly. CL, Nick and I went to the bus station and got the next bus to Palmyra.
Palmyra sits in the desert a good two or three hours northeast of Damascus. It was to be our last official stop on the way to Turkey. The road from Palmyra continues up to Deir es-Zur, a small depressing little town of little note other than that the Euphrates river passes through it and during the Armenian genocide, it was one of the gathering places for refugees. Palmyra is also a sleepy little town, but the presence of the world famous ruins, one of Syria's strongest tourist draws, has given the town a Wild West feel. Every other doorway is selling overpriced souvenirs or expensive food for triple or quadruple what the actual cost should be. The dust from the ruins blows through the town and at night, with very little open, walking around has an eerie feeling, almost like spacewalking.
We checked into the Baal Shameen Hotel. The reception area was empty except for a sleepy looking guy with ginger hair watching a DVD. There is a surprisingly large number of ginger Syrians, by the way. Far more than in any other dark-haired country I've been too. The guy gave us a room with three beds. We dumped our gear and went out for a walk. It was dark and the streets were deserted except for a lone food vendor, grilling chicken in a barbecue made from half an oil barrel. The chicken was excellent.
Back at the Baal Shameen, we settled in to drink some tea and play some crackgammon. In the background, our ginger friend watched his film. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed it was Game of Death. He was watching the scene where Bruce Lee, replete in yellow jumpsuit, gets footprinted by Kareem Abdul Jabbar. When the shot of Jabbar stnding up came onscreen, I pointed at the screen and said "Kareem Abdul Jabbar". The ginger guy looked at me like I was crazy. He pointed at the screen.
"Brucely!" he said, offended. "Brucely!"
I nodded. "I know," I replied. "The other guy is Kareem Abdul Jabbar."
The ginger guy shook his head. "Brucely!" he announced definitively and hunched back down onto the couch, arms crossed.
As we played, I became aware of the fact that he was skipping through to only the fight scenes. During the course of our games, he managed to watch all of Brucely's fight scenes and move on to Jackie Chan. I didn't offer a comment. I got the feeling that I had already insulted him enough.
After about an hour and a half of crackgammon, I started to feel pretty brucely myself, so we finished our tea and went to bed. In the morning, we would set off for the ruins.
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