Day 13: Latakia/Tripoli, Lebanon - "You want to come in?!"

So I wake up in my tent. The roof of the tent is about three inches from my face, sagging under the weight of something. All the interior walls are wet. To my right are the feet of a small Polish man who is still asleep. You may ask youself: How did I get here?

Well, the previous evening, Amir and I got to Latakia at around 19:00 and hopped in a cab to the Safwan Hotel which is run by a friend of Ahmad's, a guy named Mohammed. Mohammed is famous throughout traveller circles for his obsession with Tintin. He is also a really nice guy with a habit of cracking terrible jokes and then sniggering childishly afterwards. I loved him immediately. He was standing outside the hotel as our cab pulled up. We dumped our bags on the pavement.

"Are you coming?" he asked.

Amir and I looked at each other, perplexed.

"Where?" we replied.

Mohammed explained that every month or two, a group of hikers and campers from all over Syria go by bus into the mountains somewhere, camp out for a night or two and hike during the day. He had waited for us to arrive and wanted to know if we would be coming with him. We of course said yes.

We went to the restaurant on the corner and inhaled a good, if slow-to-arrive, meal. Then we jumped in a cab with Mohammed and a Polish guy named Bartek and went to meet the bus that would take us to a hitherto undisclosed location somewhere in the Syrian mountains. The bus was a rumbling belching old hunk of junk and the ride was lots of fun, being it that there were more passengers than seats and everyone was crawling over each other, lying down in the aisles and generally carrying on in the fashion that Syrians are wont to do.

We arrived at the site, an abandoned monastery about 50km east of Latakia. The place was rammed. It was raining. We walked from room to room, only to find that every available space was taken. I mean every space. All the floors, behind doors, even the stone patios were masked by pitched tents. There was nowhere to set up my sleeping bag, let alone put up my tent. Mohammed showed us to the "club" room, a big empty space with a bare concrete floor. A PA and decks were set up at one end. People stood around talking and smoking, waiting for the music to start.

"We will sleep here," Mohammed said.

My heart sank. The floor was covered in mud and water and of course, there woudl be music until god-knows-when. Amir was already chatting happily to a Syrian girl and Mohammed was waving to old friends. I motioned to Bartek.

"This is bullshit," I said.

"I know," said Bartek. "We'll never get to sleep."

We walked down a long flight of steps to a patch of gorund underneath two trees. It was still raining. The ground was less wet than in the "club". Bartek and I laid out the groundsheet and pitched my tent. Then we dumped our stuff and went back to the club, where the music had just begun.

Never in a million years would I have suspected that mid-May 2008 would find me in the middle of the Syrian mountains, dancing to Arabic pop music and house remixes of 70s disco tracks, surrounded by a heaving mass of shouting, sweating, exuberant Syrians. It was insane. The music was ridiculously loud, the music wavered continuously between painfully bad, really silly or hilariously funny. I worked my Middle Eastern dance moves, shaking my chest and shoulders, pointing my fingers and wiggling my hips. I was a hit. The Syrians were loving it. They cheered, clapped and eventually invited me to join in a traditional Syrian dance which involves holding hands and hopping around in a circle from one foot to the other. It's hard to describe the abandon with which these people danced. Outside, the wind was shrieking and the rain was lashing against the buildings, but inside was rave-tastic.

I got exhausted after a few hours. Bartek and I repaired to the tent, where we chatted for a while, formulated an informal plan to go to Lebanon together and then fell asleep. Then I woke up in the tent with the roof sagging almost onto my face. It had snowed during the night. Snow covered my tent and had soaked through the nylon. Nothing like quality craftsmanship. The rain was hammering down. I did not like the idea of hiking in this weather. Neither did Bartek. We clambered out of the tent, folded it up in record time and made for the "club", where Amir and Mohammed were waiting for us. The hiking for the day had been cancelled. We piled into a minibus and went back to Latakia.

Back at the hotel, I opened the tent on the roof and left it to dry. Mohammed and his crazy uncle, whose English vocabulary consists of shouting Mohammed's name over and over at increasing volumes, were glued to the TV. There was fighting in Beirut. It looked pretty bad. Hezbollah, or, as I would begin calling them in Lebanon, the Hez, had taken over the airport and most of the city centre. The border with Damascus was shut. Transport was being curtailed. Amir took one look at the situation and told me he was out. Bartek and I, on the other hand, thought that this would be an ideal time to visit Lebanon. I halved my gear, leaving most of the weight and clothing at Mohammed's hotel. Bartek and I jumped in a taxi. It cost us 500 Syrian pounds each (7 euros) to get a service taxi from Latakia to Tripoli in Lebanon.

Crossing the border was an intense experience. As we approached the border, we saw more and more people walking in the other direction, like a mass migration. Most of them had no luggage, just a bin bag or burlap sack of stuff. One guy was carrying only a television. These, the driver explained, were Syrian workers who were leaving Lebanon until the trouble blew over. Our driver, who insisted on being called Mike even though his named was Mohammed, wore sunglasses that he never removed and drove a Buick Park Avenue. He had lived in Vancouver for eleven years and loved American cars. I asked Mike what he thought about the situation in Lebanon.

"I am for my family and my God. Fuck all," he answered.

What about America?

"Fucking Bush...Bush sharmuta," Mike spat. "But I love the cars."

After leaving Syria, we drove to the Lebanese border office. It was bedlam. There were hundreds of people clamouring to be let past the chain so that they could leave. The entry hall was completely deserted. I filled in the form and handed it to the border guard.

"Your job?" he asked.

"Technician," I said. It's the most innocuous definition of something I do for money that is still technically not lying.

The guard looked at my form, then at my passport, then at my face. He gestured to the baying mob outside and to the empty entry hall.

"You want to come in?!" he asked incredulously.

I nodded eagerly. He stared at me as if I had five noses for a moment and then gave me back my passport.

"Welcome to Lebanon," the guard said, waving me towards the exit. On my way out I could have sworn I heard him call me an idiot.

We piled back into Mike's Buick and entered Lebanon. The coastal road that winds from the border to the centre of Tripoli is beautiful, overlooking mountains to the left and the sparkling Mediterranean to the right. The sea view is broken occasionally by ingenious shacks made from all manner of material, built by the homeless. Cardboard boxes, sheet metal, jerry cans, plastic bags, everything that is tossed away is put to use to make their houses.

The road was littered with the remains of some burnt tires and piles of branches and grass, left there to block the road the previous evening and that morning. We passed through several checkpoints, all of which are routine for that area of Lebanon and not because of the current situation. Mike pointed to a skeletal array of broken and bombed-out buildings. They jutted out of the wasteland that separated the highway from the sea. Some buildings were reduced to dust, others had the odd finger of concrete stubbornly sticking out. Others remained as they were but with all the walls missing, looking like the blueprints of houses rather than houses themselves. The ruins were made even uglier by the beauty of the seascape behind them. These were the remains of the Nahr-el-Bared refugee camp. Two days later I would learn more about the fate of the camp and the people who lived there. Passing by in the car, Mike would only explain that the camp was bombed by Saad al-Hariri's troops last year because the Saudi-funded Fatah-al-Islam group had taken up residence there, hiding among the Palestinian refugees. It was one of the worst instances of military action against the Palestinians but had gone largely unreported in the international press. Now the only legacy of the camp is the plethora of checkpoints that separate it from Tripoli proper.

We arrived in the centre of Tripoli to see armoured cars and tanks everywhere. Troops were deployed on every corner for several blocks in each direction. Thirty minutes before we arrived, shots had been fired, allegedly at the police. The army had responded by deploying in the centre of the town. All the shops were closed. People stood on corners, on pavements, even in the road, watching the troop movements and occasionally talking into mobile phones. Bartek and I looked at each other. It had spread from Beirut pretty fast. There was a palpable tension in the air, a feeling not of threat but rather of uncertainty, as if violence could explode from nothing at any minute. Over the next few days that I spent in Tripoli, that feeling disappeared quite rapidly, although whether as a result of less tension or just of me getting used to the situation I can't say.

The Buick's alternator gave out just as we parked. Mike swore and kicked the car a few times and then took us to the main square. After asking around, one guy showed us where our hotel was. The Pension Haddad, run by the family Haddad, is a lovely apartment with several rooms with two or three beds in each. For $7 a night I had hot water, free chai and a very familial atmosphere. On their business card, it says "Miss your Grandma?". Grandma Haddad was an incredible old crone, bent double with a hunched back and a weary, wrinkled face. Her back was so torturously pretzeled that I once saw her scrubbing the floor without actually bending over. I'm not kidding.

The common room in the pension was populated by a British guy with a broken shoulder fearfully waiting out his last day and a Danish guy who worked for the Danish Foreign Office in Jerusalem. The Dane, Phil, told us about what Beirut was like before he got out. He had arrived in Tripoli from Beirut that day. He had been walking to a bus stop and fighting had erupted around him. From what he told me, and what seemed to be common to everyone's accounts, the Hez were not in any way threatening to foreigners or even aggressive. Whenever someone I spoke to had been in the wrong place, the Hez had courteously moved them on and warned them to avoid the area. One Hezbollah gunman had even walked a couple I met to their hotel just to make sure they got there safely. Another backpacker, an American Jew, had been hitching in Lebanon and been picked up by three Hezbollah fighters. As they talked and found out he was American and Jewish, they were at pains to explain that they had a problem with the American government, not the American people, and that their fight was with Israelis, not Jews. How representative of the actual Hezbollah party line that is I do not know, but it was a common theme that the Hez made a clear distinction between what they consider the Zionist enemy and other people who simply share the same religion. When I was to talk with some of them later, in Baalbek, I received the same impression.

Bartek and I went out in search of food. We saw a crowd gathered outside a bank. A large black Mercedes was parked there. Militiamen in olive green vests carrying M16s stood guard on both sides of the street. The crowd surged forward as someone got into the car and then, as the Mercedes left, the crowd dispersed. Ahmad, our host at the Pension Haddad, told us that the guy in the car was the leader of the local militia. Tripoli is predominantly a Sunni city. They are supporters of Hariri, not of the Hez.

After eating, Bartek and I went for a walk through the old town, the abandoned souk and around the river up to the Citadel, an old fortified castle that stands proudly looking out over the hillside neighbourhoods. Tripoli was quiet. The air was still. An occasional motorbike would whizz past and the rider would wave a muted hello. After soaking up the views and both agreeing on the feeling of walking on eggshells, Bartek and I returned to the pension and went to bed.

Day 12: Aleppo/Latakia - "Writing?"

Amir and I both overslept and missed the 06:45 train. After getting up I had breakfast with Ahmad and then walked to the train station. I bought us tickets for the 15:45 express. On the way back to Bab al-Faraj, I cut through a lovely park set in the middle of Aleppo's always congested streets. The park opens up into a wide plaza with huge fountains, all very beautiful, but not before giving the unsuspecting promenader a bit of a shock.

Strolling down the tree-lined path through the centre of the park, enjoying air that didn't for once in three days, smell like diesel, I came upon a cage set off to one side. There was a group of teenagers gawping at something in the cage. Being curious by nature and prone to falling for nasty surprises, I went to join them. The cage was actually a cage within a cage, and inside the cage within a cage was a single, solitary baboon, sitting in a pile of plastic and styrofoam trash, staring sadly into the middle distance as teenagers poked fingers through the mesh and made faces at him. The cage he was in was probably twenty feet by twenty feet and apart from a concrete block in the centre of it there was nothing lese there, other than the pile of trash in which he sat. Reminded of my friend Dan's experiences in a Chinese zoo, I moved on quickly, but not fast enough to escape the expression on the baboon's face being seared into my mind. Having seen them in the wild, I think of baboons as very proud, even aggressive creatures. Seeing such a creature so patently robbed of its dignity and freedom, reacting to it in such a human manner, displaying all the signs of a despair that we so often fool ourselves into believing is solely the preserve of human suffering brought on by consciousness - it was horrible.

After packing, drinking a hot sweet cup of tea and arranging to meet Ahmad in Damascus on our return from Lebanon, Amir and I went to the train station and boarded our train.

I promptly busted out the AlphaSmart to catch up on my notes and, about fifteen minutes after pulling out of the station, a man stopped by our seats.
"You don't remember me?"
Amir recognised him and smiled uncomfortably. I was studiously ignoring him (and everyone else) in order to catch up on my notes before getting to Lattakia. The guy looked down at Amir.
"Come with me to the dining car." It was not an invitation.
Amir stood up.
"Both of you."
Amir, bless him, said that I would stay with the bags and besides, I was busy. The guy turned his attention to me. It was Baseball Hat from last night.
"Writing?"
Something about the inflection he put on the word coupled with the way he scanned the screen of my AlphaSmart gave me a chill. Amir interrupted Baseball Hat's piercing gaze by standing up and saying he was ready fo some tea. They left for the dining car.

I need to add at this point that even though Baseball Hat had creeped me out, I didn't think anything of it because the AlphaSmart seems to get a very big reaction when Syrians see it. They ask what it does, look at the little display screen, run a finger along an edge. Abdo, one of the guys who works at Ahmad's hotel, even asked me how much it cost and then offered to buy it from me even though he doesn't speak English and none of the keys are in Arabic. As Amir and Baseball Hat disappeared into the dining car, I suddenly realised that since arriving in Syria I had seen not one laptop. No portable computers of any kind. They have everything else, from MP4 players to plasma TVs, but no laptops, only desktops.

With my head down, I was totally oblivious to time passing. Amir sat down and tapped my shoulder.
"That was the guy from last night."
I nodded.
"It turns out he wanted to know what life was like in Turkey."
I nodded again.

When we got off the train in Latakia, Baseball Hat and his friend were extremely nice and gave my arm a squeeze when they said goodbye.

Day 11: Aleppo - "Where are you from?"

One of the things that caught my eye on the streets of Aleppo was a new style of chadhor I had never seen before. We've all seen the ninja, the semi-penguin, the nun and the simple headscarf in action. But out and about in Aleppo, even in the baking heat, I have been seeing a lot of women who are not only clad in black from head to toe but also have opaque black veils draped over their faces and even black gloves on their hands. The effect is to conjure the impression of a wraith from a horror movie or one of the demons from Silent Hill. It is actually a little creepy seeing women dressed like that, not in a judgemental manner or remotely anything to do with women's liberation - it is just flat out weird when you pass a woman on the street who is dressed as I would imagine lepers were in the Middle Ages. All skin covered, not even eyes visible, all black. I even saw one such lady holding a mobile phone to the side of her veil and wearing sunglasses over the covering. Luckily I didn't laugh, but Cousin It from the Addams Family sprang to mind.

Anyway, I began my day resting comfortably in the lounge of the hotel, reading my book. Once Amir was up, we headed over to the Citadel, a huge fortress that appears as if out of nowhere as you walk through the narrow streets of the Old City. It isn't visible from the modern sharias of Aleppo but rather appears suddenly, like a mirage. The Citadel is very well preserved and also features an immaculately tiled mosque with a beautiful stained glass dome, the only part of the ruin to have been fully restored. After the Citadel Amir and I sat down for a tea and formulated a plan. He and I both intended to see the same countries, and since doubles are cheaper than singles and we made each other laugh, we decided to throw in together for the forseeable future of our respective journeys. First thing first, we decided to leave for Lattakia, the city by the sea, on the 06:45 train the following morning. We broke up the huddle so that I could go see the souks.

The souks of Aleppo have been declared a wonder of the world by everyone from Lonely Planet to Nick Danziger, the author of the book I'm reading at the moment. They sure are big, but other than the number of shops, there is nothing significantly different or unique about the Aleppo souks to distinguish them from others I've been to. Having said that, I wasn't in the market for anything, and it would seem only fair to point out that judging a souk is only accurate when you've actually been shopping in it.

After the souk I went to meet Ahmad and Amir for dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Kan Zaman, somewhere in the labyrinth of tiny winding streets that constitutes the back alleys of Aleppo. On the way back to the hotel we stumbled across an Armenian club dedicated to the poet Takian (I think I spelt it right). A lovely lady, Mrs. Sarkissian, who was Jordanian but married to an Armenian, walked us through the exhibition that was on in the back room. I learned that Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as the official religion and that the Armenian alphabet has 36 letters and, along with Hebrew, is the alphabet considered closest to Assyrian.

Following our unexpected tour through Armenia's history, we reached the top of Bab al-Faraj, the street next to the enormous and ungodly Sheraton hotel. Bab al-Faraj is distinguished by a beautiful clock tower which, until recently, served as the pick-up point for prostitutes in Aleppo. Getting sick of the curb-crawling, the police moved the hookers on and they haven't returned yet. The clock tower also recently was the site of a very public execution. Five men aged 18 to 23 were hanged at 5am for crimes ranging from extortion and murder to child abuse. The bodies were left twisting in the wind from 5am to 11am to ensure that as many people as possible saw the wages of sin. Crime has since dropped, Ahmad told us.

As we walked down Bab al-Faraj, a small guy in a baseball hat flanked by what can only be described as two goons popped up out of nowhere.

"Welcome in Syria," he said amiably.

"Thank you."

"Where are you from?"

At this point, Amir got what he later told me was a tingling of his spider sense. It is important to note at this point that, while difficult to enforce fully, it is officially against the law for Syrians to socialise with foreigners unless they work at hotels or are registered tour guides. Amir nudged me and then answered the question.

"Turkish," he said, indicating himself.

"English," I said.

Amir pointed at Ahmad. "Indian."

Ahmad remained conspicuously silent. Baseball Hat and his goons fish-eyed us for a moment.

"Why are you in Syria? Tourism? Business?"

"Tourism," we chorused.

I noticed that Ahmad's grip on his bag of pistachios had tightened considerably.

Baseball Hat chin-lifted at Ahmad. "You are Indian?"

"He doesn't speak English," Amir said.

"Yeah," I joined in, slipping in a wink at Ahmad. "It's a real pain in the ass."

There was a silence filled with potential. Baseball Hat nodded. "Have a good night and welcome in Syria."

We thanked the denizens of Syria's secret police and repaired to the roof terrace of the hotel tout fucking suite. It was only there that Ahmad told us about the law regarding Syrians and foreigners. My conversation with the British couple from the previous day sprang to mind.

Day 10: Aleppo - You Cannot Be Syrians!

I woke up at 6am being baked by the sun through my tent. My nose was completely blocked. It appears that they have hay fever in Syria. Ah, all the comforts of home. The hay fever would blight my first day in Aleppo, which was otherwise fully awesome. Volker, one of the Germans staying at the hotel, and I went for breakfast at about 8. We found a great little joint that served omelettes, potatoes, salad, aubergine, humous, bread and tea. We ate like absolute kings and afterwards, the bill came to a laughable 300 Syrian including tip. 4 euros. Amazing.

Back at the hotel preparations were being made for a day of action. Ahmad, the hotel manager, had offered to show us all around St. Simeon, Ain Dara, the Old City of Aleppo and the world-famous souks. We walked down to the bus station where the service taxis and minibuses congregate. Ahmad began negotiations with a fast-expanding circle of drivers. After a few minutes, one fat driver clutching prayer beads stepped up and shouted for a while, gesturing wildly and occasionally glaring at us. I asked Ahmad what was up. Ahmad told me that the going rate to St. Simeon and back with waiting time should be 500 Syrian. He had been quoted 1000 and, when he had started getting the price down, our fat friend had barged in and declared that he would personally assault violently any driver who took us for less than 1000. Ahmad made a phone call and we had our minibus, but for 800. Split between seven people that made less than 2 euros per person for a two hour round trip plus waiting time. During the furore, I noticed a Syrian car with a Jesus fish bumper sticker. Amir was kind enough to play the role of Vanna White.

St. Simeon is an old temple complex made famous by Simeon Stylites, the nutcase who lived at the top of pillars for over 30 years back in the day. Woefully short on pillars, ironically, St. Simeon, or Samaan as they call it in Arabic, is a great archaeological find and has arresting views over the surrounding countryside. Due to the low season, we were the only people there apart from a few school groups and couples.

Throughout my time in Syria so far, perfectly exemplified by my experience at St. Simeon, I have to say that the Syrian people are by far the downright nicest people I have ever met. In terms of welcoming, helpfulness and general all-round bonhomie, they beat everywhere else I have been hands down. Every person I pass in the street here says hello or welcome, smiles, helps with directions or waits patiently as I massacre their native tongue in an attempt to communicate. They regularly go (literally) out of their way to show me around, point out the right road or even to find me what I'm looking for. In return for this, unlike the enlightened self-interest of the Moroccans or the vampiric baksheesh-demanding of the Egyptians, they want nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have never felt so welcome and so relaxed in the company of people from a different culture. The worst I could say would be that they are so friendly that after a while returning every wave, every salaam or hello, every smile becomes not as bad as a chore but quite time-consuming.

After St. Simeon, we all voted unanimously to continue to Ain Dara, an ancient hilltop hamlet that dates back 4000 years. Ain Dara is a brief but brisk climb up a hill. Carved out of limestone and basalt, it overlooks valleys in every direction. It is spectacular. Very windy though. I dozed off in the minibus during the hour and a half drive back to Aleppo. The bus arrived back at the station, 200 or so yards from the souks. After paying, my stomach informed me that evacuation procedures had begun and I literally ran to the nearest toilet, which, funnily enough, was in the rear courtyard of a toilet store. When I came out fifteen minutes later, everyone was gone. I walked back to the hotel on my own as the sun began to set. On the way, I bumped into an English couple who had been on the train with the rest of us. We talked in awed tones about the warmth and generosity of the Syrians and then they told me that, mixed in with the hospitality had been an unexpected and informal run-in with the secret police. Apparently, as they were poking around in the souk, a man popped out of nowhere and began asking rather pointed questions about where they were from, what they did for a living, where they were planning on going in Syria, who they had socialised with etc. I was amazed, as were they, by both the fact that something like that still happens and that it can pop up out of nowhere. The following night Amir, Ahmad and I would have our own encounter with the secret police, albeit a much less intense one.

Before getting back to the hotel, I stopped off in a teahouse to see if I could pick up a game of crackgammon before dinner. I got the board from the man behind the cash register and surveyed the room, trying to make eye contact with whoever seemed bored or unoccupied. A man in the corner gave me a smile and waved me over. His name was Haza. Haza runs a ladies' shoes and handbags emporium in the city of Homs. He and I played several games while he waited fo his train, although rather than the shesh-besh I'm used to, he taught me the Syrian version of backgammon in between an endless stream of Gauloise blondes. Syrian backgammon is played by each player having all of his pieces stacked on the first space on the far quarter. Then each player rolls and moves his pieces from the far quarter to his own in order to take them off the board. Single pieces can not be landed on or captured. To begin with, it seemed dull, but once I realised that it was actually very hard to get the job done under those conditions, I got really into it and in the end Haza had to run as soon as he finished our fourth or fifth game. He told me to write down the name of his shop and come see him if I was in Homs. Then he left, but not before paying for my tea as well as his own. Another example of Syrian hospitality in action.

Amir, Ahmad and the others were back from the Old City and souks by the time I got back to the hotel and we wound up the day by picking up a bag of food from the informal barbecue restaurant down the road (run from a metal-framed market stall) and getting a couple of bottles of very good Syrian wine. We sat on the roof, talked and drank. It was bound to happen sooner or later, although I'm glad it wasn't me who caved first - Amir was the first to crack a pun using the word Syrians. "Are you Syrians?" "You cannot be Syrians." The pun served the dual purpose of fulfilling the mandatory bad joke quota that I have to fill every day and also summing up, in an homage to John McEnroe, the incredulity we all experienced when basking in the unbelievable hospitality of people we had been told were extremists or at least tolerant of extremists. Amir, Ahmad and I had hit it off big time and Ahmad insisted that I share his room for the night since it was very windy and chilly on the roof. I drifted off in one of the very comfortable beds in the 4-bed room Ahmad had commandeered for himself, watching subtitled action movies on Arab satellite.

Day 9: Somewhere in southern Turkey - The End of Sex in Iraq

We were approaching Adana when I woke up. The train had rocked me to sleep and now, lying in the gap between dream and reality, I felt like I was swaying in a hammock. Every thirty to forty minutes, the train would grind to a sudden, juddering halt. After a while I got used to it and it stopped bothering me.

At around noon we got to the Turkish border and we all piled off the train, blinking in the bright sunlight. I had my passport stamped by a man who regarded me with such suspicion that I actually felt guilty without knowing why. It is a peculiarity of the Turkish land borders that the guards always make you feel like a smuggler or a criminal. In general that's true of all borders, but I always feel particularly suspect around the Turks. As a side note, it interested me in Istanbul and throughout the country that Turks seem to really only have two "looks". The appearance of the men folk fits into a Venn diagram between two extremes - power metaller and sex offender. Either they have the long hair, goatee and face of a veteran headbanger or the shifty eyes and lugubriously groomed oiliness of a serial perpetrator. Occasionally, hybrids appear to startling effect.

Anyway, so after I got back on the train I started chatting to a chubby affable Iraqi named Saad. Saad was a very interesting guy. He lived in Mosul and was on his way home via Syria where, he said, he had some business. What business would be made clear to me later, over some Turkish delight.

We stood talking on the landing between carriages. Saad had just, as the train pulled in, been released from Turkish custody. When he got to the border, they had arrested him. His crime was that a suspected terrorist also named Saad was supposedly at large in Turkey. Before you get an image in your mind, let me describe Saad to you. He was a very cheerful, plump man with a neatly trimmed beard and twinkling eyes. He was a doctor of herbal medicine and, in Iraq, presents a television program on Arabic satellite that teaches people how to treat their relatives with herbs and grasses. He also is a card-carrying member of the Association of Free Prisoners, the organisation that looks after civilians wrongfully imprisoned by Saddam. He and his brother had been taken into custody by Saddam before the war and his brother was murdered. He is single and lives alone. He showed me a wedge of Iraqi money and told me that when he tried to change it in Turkey, they accused him of being a money launderer and refused to touch the cash. He was on his way to spend a week or so in Syria before getting the bus to Mosul. Given the rare opportunity to talk to an Iraqi who actually still lives there, I picked his brains.

He told me that although Mosul is still a bit dangerous and Iraq on the whole is in the toilet, he would never move away.
"It is my country," he said. "I love my country."
I asked him whether he thought it was worse with Saddam or the Americans. That was when he told me about his brother and showed me his various cards and memberships. He said that it was essentially six of one, half a dozen of the other. Under Saddam, everyone lived in fear of Saddam, people disappeared and nobody felt safe. Now, he said, people live in fear of the American troops and the militias, people disappeared and nobody felt safe. Under Saddam, the border situation was less strict, but other than that life in Mosul at least was not qualitatively that much worse. Obviously, he wasn't from Baghdad, but rather a region of the country that functions largely as an autonomous entity anyway and is touted as a beacon of stability in Iraq. Saad also explained that the borders are shut by the Americans to keep out Europeans in particular because the prevailing wisdom is that anyone who is crazy enough to come to Iraq voluntarily is clearly going to help "the insurgents". It was strange talking to Saad about the war in his country because he did not seem either angry about the invasion or happy about the American presence. The only time he was not happy and smiling was when he mentioned his brother's murder at the hands of Saddam's goons, at which point he choked up slightly and we shared a silence until he was okay to continue.

We arrived at the Syrian border and all clambered down. The Syrians were very friendly. The guard who took my passport looked at my photo, then at my face and just laughed. My passport photo, like all the new biometric pictures, is of me not smiling. Now, honestly evaluating myself, I can say that when I don't smile in photographs, I look like either a murderer or a rapist depending on the lighting. The Syrian guard looked at my picture again, then looked at me and made a mock serious face. He walked away laughing.

The system for entering Syria could only have been invented by a country with rife unemployment. There were six guards, each of whom handled one phase of the entry procedure. First, we were herded into the waiting room and asked to sit down. Then, after a few minutes, we were given blue entry/exit cards. Five minutes later, after many smiles and solicitous hand movements, I managed to get a pen from one of the guards. After filling out the form, it is submitted to one guard whose job seemed to consist of leaning back in his chair, checking his mobile for texts and randomly asking people to sit down, although not everyone and not with any discernable pattern. He looked at the form and then handed it to another guard who stood behind him. This guard leaned over the desk and, after a cursory examination, stamped my card. I asked if that was it. The sitting guard told me to sit down and checked his mobile. The cards, one by one, were passed to the four guards who sat in booths to one side of the room. The windows for the booths faced out onto the waiting area and the benches ran along the length of them, so in order to talk to a guard behind the glass you had to lean over whoever was sitting down. Names were called at random or, more commonly, the passport under current examination would be held up to the glass and one of us would have to fetch the person who matched the photo. Then the guard would ask one or two questions (in my case they were "Where do you stay in Syria?" and "What do your job in home?"). When satisfied, he would motion for us to be seated and then, five or ten minutes later, another guard at another window would call out a name and the procedure would be repeated.

When my name was called for the third or fourth time I stood up, threw my arms wide and shouted "Here I am!" The guard behind the window grinned and said "You are like king, no?" After that, I was given my passport in record time and waited outside for the rest of us to shuffle out. In total, crossing the Syrian border took just over two hours.

Later on, back on the train, I stopped by Saad's cabin to say hello. He insisted that I come in and share some Turkish delight with him. I sat down on the bed next to him and he pressed gooey treats into my hand. No, not those kind of treats you sick freaks.

I asked him how long he would stay in Aleppo. He said he would only stay long enough to change his Iraqi money and then he would go to Damascus. I asked him why he wouldn't stay in Aleppo. He smiled at me and said that there was no sex in Aleppo but plenty in Damascus. I was surprised at the idea that Damascus would be a sex tourism hot spot, so I asked him what he meant by sex.

Saad explained to me that in Damascus, at the offices of the television channel he worked for, he could have sex with the Bedouin cleaning lady. In certain areas of Damascus, cleaning lady is a euphemism for hooker. Saad, clearly feeling a bit defensive, told me that he wasn't doing anything wrong. I told him I agreed. He said that many men look down on other Muslims who go to prostitutes, but to him it was logical. As a single, portly middle-aged man, where else would he get some action? I asked him if there were hookers in Iraq. Apparently, before the war there was a bustling skin trade in Iraq, but after the invasion all the hookers left.
"The war," Saad said sadly, "was the end of sex in Iraq."
That was why he was going to Damascus. Cherchez-la-femme. He gave me the universal "know-what-I'm-sayin'" look and gripped my hand, laughing. I laughed with him and he forced me to eat more Turkish delight, which, while delicious, ceases to be delightful very quickly after the first few mouthfuls.
I went back to my cabin, laid down on the bed and watched the Syrian scenery roll by. After all the mental images of unforgiving wilderness and Middle Eastern sandy desert, it was a refreshing surprise to find that the north of Syria is incredibly verdant. Orchards of olive trees, fields of wheat, cabbage and other crops that I didn't recognise by sight flew past. I began to get the impression that the weekly train from Istanbul was some sort of free cinema for the farmers. Every bend and straightway of the track was lined with farmers, shepherds and children watching and waving to the train. There were several boys we passed who threw stones at the train, but apart from them, everyone was welcoming and good-natured. Apart from one old farmer who came out of his hut, saw his daughter (not older than four or five) waving at the train and promptly gripped her ear and started beating her. We passed out of sight as he started to drag her towards the house. Nice guy.

Over the course of the 30-odd hour journey from Istanbul, the passengers in the two sleeping cars (myslef included) had bonded and, when we finally began pulling in through the filthy and ramshackle suburbs of Aleppo (Haleb to locals), resolved to share taxis to a hotel together.

Disembarking at Aleppo train station at night is a very surreal experience. There were no other trains at the station and the platforms were completely deserted. Half the columns were fractured and broken. There was white paint spilled all over the ground and even up the walls and, in one particular feat, over the arch above the stairs to the tunnel.

We all bundled into taxis and headed for the Hotel Al Gawaher, chosen on the basis of an excellent reputation and very reasonable prices. Arriving at the hotel, the first inconvenience struck. There were ten of us and seven beds left in the entire hotel. We had arrived on the eve of Yom Shahid, Martyrs' Day. Kind of like Veterans' Day but with more suicide. Because it was a national holiday the following day, the hotel was almost completely full. Ahmad, the manager, came down to reception and began sorting us out. Ahmad was very soft-spoken, very patient and extremely nice. As I was to learn later by hanging out with him, he was also incredibly funny and very generous. And, like all the people I've met so far, he had a lot of stories to tell.

After shuffling beds and room configurations around for half an hour or so, everyone had been given a bed except for myself, an English girl named Laura and a tall, loud and very funny guy named Amir. Ahmad decided that he would give Laura his own room in the hotel and that left Amir and me. He showed us the roof. I was all over the roof like white on rice. The roof terrace looked out over the city of Aleppo, lights twinkling, music blaring, cars honking. I pitched my tent on the roof, securing it to the sofas that lined the sides of the terrace. Amir decided that he would sleep on the roof too. Presto, problem solved.

After getting squared away, we all went for a falafel which turned out to be a very complex procedure. The amount of effort that goes into choosing a bar or restaurant in London is the same amount of attention that is applied to selecting a falafel vendor. Spaced all over Aleppo, as I'm sure they are in the rest of Syria, each falafel vendor has his own recipes, his own mixture of vegetables and sauces and every combination is a hit with someone. Ahmad recommended a place but, when we asked someone on the street where it was, he looked at the name on the piece of card with something akin to indignation.
"You want to eat here?"
"Why, isn't it a restaurant?"
"It's a restaurant."
"So it's bad?"
At this point, our new friend, Fawaz, made the Arabic shoo-fly hand gesture that means "forget about it".
"So where should we go?"
Fawaz and his friend went into a lengthy and heated confab and then agreed on a suitable location. Then, in a perfect illustration of why Syrian hospitality is to the world what Everest is to a molehill, Fawaz and his friend walked us two kilometres across town to what they considered to be the best in town. Although obviously my falafel palate has yet to develop sufficiently, I have to say that it was pretty special. Falafel in Syria is fried in a doughnut shape and crumbled into a pitta bread along with fresh tomato, cucumber and garlic sauce. This appears to be the base. The one we had that night also included fresh mint, fresh parsley and a dash of chilli. All for the whopping price of 30 Syrian pounds, which is less than 50 euro cents, around 35p. That even appears to be in the higher price bracket, since I have enjoyed equally rocking falafage for as low as 15 Syrian, which is about 15p. Awesome. After hoovering up my falafel, the two Danish girls in the group, who, against my advice, didn't put "cartoonist" down as their occupation on their entry forms, found a Syrian pizza place right next door to the falafel joint. Syrian pizza is the same as normal pizza but comes in personal 4-inch mini-pizza form rather than slices. While they were selecting, I hovered out front looking at the drinks. The guy inside the pizzeria behind the counter shouted at me. I looked up. He was motioning for me to come in. I walked into the pizza place. He pointed at one of the pizzas, fresh out of the oven. I signalled that I was full and couldn't possibly eat any more. He pushed the pizza across the counter so that it was several inches closer to me in a surprisingly pimp-like manner. Again, I showed him my swollen gut and professed to be completely complete. He said "Halas" (Arabic for "enough" or "finished"), wrapped the pizza in a sheet of paper, grabbed my wrist and stuck it in my hand. He motioned for me to eat it. I shook my head. He gave me a Look. Anyone that has ever received or witnessed Middle Eastern hospitality knows the Look. It says "I will not stop insisting, even if you cry like a little bitch". I took a bite of the pizza. It was good. Suddenly, I didn't feel so full. I wolfed down the rest of it and rubbed my belly while licking my lips, performing the mime of "oh wow that was good, thank you" that works in foreign countries as well as at dinner with deaf grandmothers. After wiping my mouth and throwing away the wrapper, I rubbed my middle and index fingers against my thumb. The man behind the counter gave me a look of absolute shock and shooed me away with his hands. I asked again and he smiled at me and shook his head. Free pizza. Amazing.

Afterwards, Amir got a bottle of vodka and we all sat on the roof and did the traveller chat thing. I fell asleep in my tent listening to the low, soothing hum of Aleppo's traffic and the giggling of tipsy travellers.

Day 8: Istanbul - My Guts Betray Me

I was woken up in my monastic cell of a bedroom by the dispirited grumblings of my wayward guts. First at 4:30, then 6:30 and finally at 7:30 I stumbled out of bed, unlocked my bedroom door, staggered to the toilet and shared the fruits of Macedonian tap water with the Turkish sewage system. My stomach was not happy. To make matters worse, at 8:55 my train would be pulling out of Haydarpasa station fo Aleppo in Syria. I had no idea what the "facilities" might be like on the train and it was with no small amount of trepidation that I got dressed and limped limply towards a prospective 58 hours of water-less squat toilet hell.

I got my rucksack out of the locker at the station, bought myself a 5 litre jug of water and walked to the platform. The first hiccup of my voyage loomed on the horizon in the form of the train guard. He stood by the doorway to the train holding some papers in his hand. I produced my ticket which, in triplicate, clearly showed my berth. Wagon 7, berth 13. Right there in black and white, or, in the interests of purely factual reporting, blue and yellow. The guard looked at my ticket, down at his sheet, back at my ticket, back at his sheet. The sinking in my guts coupled with the already war-torn nature of the region to produce a singularly unpleasant feeling. We checked once, twice, thrice. My name was not on the manifest. On Wagon 7 in berth 13 was an erstwhile interloper named Hussain Ali Mohammed. Under the circumstances, a cheap laugh at the cliched nature of his name did not seem warranted, although I did file it away for later appreciation.

Eventually, through much gesturing and the incredibly pained expression on my face, my new friend relented gave me a berth in the sleeping car. I settled into the cosy cabin and hoped that nobody would be sharing with me. My wish was granted. I had a cabin to myself. Awesome.

The train pulled out of Haydarpasa and, as I said goodbye to Istanbul, I also felt a surge of excitement. This was it. I was on my way to Syria. In between 29 - 58 hours, I would be there. In between trips to the toilet, I napped comfortably for the first few hours and spent the remainder of the first day on the train reading and occasionally chatting to the other passengers. One highlight was meeting three Irish guys on their way through Syria, Jordan and Egypt. From Egypt, one of them was going to fly home and the other two were going to backpack down the African continent from Egypt to South Africa. It was sorely tempting to tag along, but hey, there's always time for Janjaweed and malaria another time. Sudan and Ethiopia have been on my list for some time now but that will have to be another journey altogether.

The sun set as we passed through miles and miles of farmland with occasional houses and shacks strewn across it. I made myself a tuna sandwich, called my wife and went to sleep.

Day 7: İstanbul - The Hot Waiter

After staggering off the bus into a surprisingly hot İstanbul morning, I took the bus to the waterfront and caught the ferry across to the Asian side of the city. This is the first time I've been to the Asian side. The ferry was populated by every imaginable part of Turkish society. A man missing way too many teeth was walking around with a tray selling fresh orange juice, tea and cheese toasties.

The ferry dropped me off at Haydarpaşa statıon, which is where my train to Aleppo leaves from tomorrow morning at 08:55. Getting the ticket took some figuring out, but eventually the man at the international ticket counter passed it to me along with the news that my expected arrival time in Syria (14:00 on Monday) will actually be 19:00 on Tuesday. A 29 hour train ride just became a 58 hour one. Hooray.

I did some research that confirmed my suspicions. The first ferry to Haydarpaşa tomorrow morning is at 10:40, two hours after my train leaves. That means that I have to spend tonight on the Asian side, no great hardshıp except for the fact that all the hostels are on the European side. On this side there are only hotels chargıng 50 euros a night or more.

I went for a bit of a wander and, just as I was about to relent and get just any old room, found the perfect hotel for me. It's a total fleapit just up a side street from the waterfront. The receptionist was a teenage boy who was rehearsing his hip-hop lyrics to a backing track through headphones when I walked in. For 30 YTL a night (around 15 euros) I have a lovely single room that looks like a skid row flophouse from the 1930s. Part of the 30 YTL is an additional 5 YTL charge that I agreed to in order to have access to a shower. In my foolishly hopeful ignorance, I allowed myself to believe that the room would have an en-suite bathroom or, at the very worst, shared facilities. The truth turned out to be even funnier.

My room, number 103, is a regular little shitbox with a skinny, sad little single bed and a small TV propped up on a foldaway table. When Hip-Hop showed me my room, I asked him where the shower was. He pointed to room 101. Room 101 is en-suite. Since there is no-one staying there, I got the privilege of showering not in a shared hallway facility but actually in a different bedroom altogether. That was a first. When I asked him if I could have a shower immediately in order to wash off the ashtray funk of twelve hours on a smoking bus, he nodded, went downstairs and then came back up moments later to inform me that he had 'turned on the hot waiter'. Without wanting to seem as if I'm mocking him for his pronunciation, I have to admit that there was a moment there when I thought something very strange indeed was going on. While I was in the shower, I couldn't help having a puerile giggle about having the hot waiter all over my body. God I'm such a child sometimes. 'Sometimes?', I hear you cry. Ha ha ha.

Now that I've brought you up to date, I'm off to the Chillout Cengo Hostel to return the novel I flagrantly stole from them when I was last here a month ago with my beloved wife. When I return it I will also, in the style of Nasruddin, leave behind my guide book to Eastern Europe, showing conclusively that objects when borrowed often accrue interest in the process. Then it's off for a stroll around the city, a city that I enjoy more every time I come here. Hopefully I can rustle up a few rounds of crackgammon and some apple tea. If not, I'll be in my skid row hotel room, listening to the hot waiter moaning through the pipes.