Inutile et Indispensable

Lattakia – اللاذقية‎

I hadn’t exactly decided on where to go in Syria besides Aleppo and Damascus, the two largest cities. I debated going to Palmyra, a famous archeological site in the desert in the eastern part of the country, but in the end elected to go to Lattakia on the Mediterranean coast. I didn’t know much about Lattakia besides that it was a more modern, western city. Considering how hot it had been in Turkey and Aleppo, I figured going to the coast was a good idea. What I found was a disappointing city, but an amazing ruined castle, so it all worked out in the end.

My arrival in Lattakia was uneventful—I took a train for a few dollars from Aleppo to the coast, and caught a taxi from the station to a hostel I’d heard about from a few places. My driver was a very amusing and engaging man named Obey (“Obey…but not ‘disobey,’” he was quick to laughingly point out in pretty smooth English). He was definitely a charmer, and in the short amount of time between the train station and the hostel, he had convinced me that it was a good idea for me to ride around with him the next day to two large archeological sites, and then to a conveniently-located city on the main highway between Aleppo and Damascus, so that I could keep my luggage in the trunk of his car and cover a lot more ground. Price was negotiable, but sounded pretty reasonable when I did some quick math in my head, considering how much this would help me out. He dropped me off at Hotel Safwan with a plan to meet the following morning at 10 am.

Safwan is a kind of bizarre place that, in the end, I feel was pretty overrated. I had read about it in both my Middle East and Lebanon/Syria Lonely Planet books, as well as found the owner Mohammad’s page on CouchSurfing. He advertised extremely cheap rooftop beds, the maximum rate for which appeared to be about $3 / night, but with discounts for CouchSurfers or people who stayed more than one night. Additionally, Mohammad was advertised as a pretty fantastic local resource and all-around quirky guy—he has what could only be labeled as an obsessive fetish with the Tin Tin line of comics, and owns every book in the series, many of them in multiple languages. On the walls are pictures of historical Syrian sites, with cutouts of Tin Tin and his dog Snowy pasted amongst the ruins and palaces. Apparently, further lodging discounts were offered for guests who could answer Tin Tin trivia. I have no idea how he developed this particular manic fixation, but it’s pretty pervasive everywhere in the hostel. However, on my arrival I was disappointed to find that the rooftop beds weren’t available, and my only option was to book a double room for myself, at 8 pm, and hope that someone else showed up without a reservation and would split the cost with me. This was still incredibly cheap compared to American prices, but I ended up paying $10 for a bare, dirty, hot room that I shared with at least five good-sized cockroaches, and a pretty filthy shared bathroom that I avoided in whatever ways possible. Mohammad did indeed seem like a pretty personable guy, but I was unimpressed with my experience overall.

After I checked in to Hotel Safwan, I wandered around Lattakia on my own for a while. There wasn’t a lot to see—I was excited to hear that they had their own version of a Corniche, but it turns out that it follows the ugly industrial harbor, so really is nothing but a glorified sidewalk along a shipyard. The central “downtown”-ish area, as far as I could tell, was only really made up of a few streets with some restaurants that I wasn’t particularly interested in. I wandered around until I found a falafel stand crowded with locals, and worked my way into the mob in the doorway. The spectacle inside was incredible—a round, balding man was making falafel sandwiches faster than I’d ever witnessed any food prepared. His hands flew across a wide counter with pita bread, freshly fried falafel balls, trays of vegetables, and wax paper wrapping, simultaneously taking orders and money while he worked. He did the majority of the labor, aided only by another man in the back continuously frying up batches of falafel that would disappear as quickly as they were finished, and what appeared to be the most facial-hair-endowed 12-year-old kid I’d ever seen, who would reach into the flurry of the first man’s hands to crush the falafel into the pita and put orders of the finished products into plastic bags. It seemed like there was no end to the orders, and at any given moment there would be between four and eight sandwiches on the counter in simultaneous production, with a never-ending rush of activity around them. I ordered two and a drink, and was amazed at the total price—50 Syrian pounds, or just over $1. Not bad.

I didn’t really do much of anything else that night, but talked to Mohammad about my plans for the following day. He helped me a little bit with my math, and I realized that I would actually end up paying a huge amount to ride around with Obey, and could pay probably less than 20% of that by going on my own. Oops. He called Obey for me (apparently they knew each other already), and cancelled my request for the next day’s transportation. However, at 10 the next morning, Obey showed up regardless, hoping to still con me into some sort of a deal. He almost managed, too, convincing me that just going to the first of the two castles on our earlier itinerary was still a good deal. Once again, I semi-agreed to it without doing the math very well, and then quickly afterwards realized that I was getting ripped off badly. Once again, I changed my mind, and him take me to the minibus station instead so I could do it myself. He did so, but ripped me off very badly on the fare, charging about four times what the short ride was worth and blatantly lying about the distance traveled. It was an unfortunate experience, but at least I didn’t end up going the full distance with him.

Citadel of Salah Ed-Din – قلعة صلاح الدين

The minibus was extremely cheap and took about 45 minutes to take me to the village of Haffa. There’s not much to see in Haffa, except a large crusader castle about 6 km away that I was really interested in. I figured the best way to get there was to take a taxi, but before diving into another haggling experience I wanted to get some breakfast. This actually turned out to be a great move, because the falafel stand I went to was owned by a very friendly older man who helped me out a lot. He had a much more low-key operation than the one in Lattakia, and I sat and chatted with him in Arabic for a while. A few other men from the village came by and ordered food as well, and I had a nice conversation with them. They offered me a bizarre combination of juice boxes and cigarettes, which I found amusing, and advised me that the cheapest way to get up to the citadel was by “moto.” You don’t have to speak Arabic to guess what “moto” implies—we’re talking motorcycles. I was a little apprehensive, as I was raised with a pretty healthy fear of two-wheeled motor vehicles and have very little experience actually riding them, but it was sort of a “when in Rome” moment. The owner of the stand offered to flag one for me, which he did by walking out into the street and whistling loudly when a motorcycle passed by. I have no idea how he distinguished this particular one as a motorcycle taxi, rather than someone who owned their own wheels, but the driver agreed to take me to the castle for a few dollars. I hopped on the back, and off we went.

Of course there were no helmets. Of course we drove fast. Of course there was frequent traffic going the opposite direction. Of course there were steep up and downhill slopes, and switchback curves. But damn, this was fun. I resolved to trust the driver, as his life was just as much at risk as mine, and he seemed to know what he was doing. We raced along the small but paved road, until we reached a densely wooded ravine, and dropped into it on a series of tight switchbacks. The castle was clearly visible at the top of the other side, large and ominous. My driver turned the motor off and we coasted down, fast and silent, announcing our presence at each turn with a single honk before drifting around it. As we descended, we became more and more surrounded by trees, which surprised me considering my initial perceptions of Syria being a hot and desert-like nation. We reached the cool shade of the bottom, crossed a bridge, and started ascending. The driver used our remaining momentum to kick the engine back on as we were climbing the first switchback, and we started speeding uphill, still honking with each corner. Finally, we leveled out, and raced past a particularly amazing spot—we were passing through a deep and narrow stone canyon, and in the exact center was a lone, perfectly square pillar of rock that went up level with the top of the stone walls on either side. Researching afterwards, I found that this canyon was dug out of the ground by hand by the Byzantines when they originally improved an existing Phoenician fort in that location in the 10^th century. The Crusaders improved on it further when they took it, and that this “needle” of rock was cut out as a support for a bridge that ran across the top. The canyon is 28 meters deep and 14-20 wide. The bridge is gone today, but the pillar stands in the center of the paved road, dividing it into two lanes. Pretty impressive.

My driver dropped me off at the stairs around the back side of the castle where people enter. A quick climb up took me to the ticket office, where once again I presented my faded and expired International Student Identity Card to get a ridiculously low entrance fee. I spent the next few hours wandering around the fortress and grounds, taking lots of pictures. There were a lot of very impressive features of the castle, including two absolutely massive water cisterns underground that I accidentally stumbled upon. I would walk through a doorway and suddenly be in a massive hollow room, at the top of a metal staircase that led down to a foot or so of centuries’ worth of rainwater collected at the bottom of the stone container. A few holes in the rock ceiling provided squares of sunlight that reflected off the water and illuminated the room, and otherwise there was nothing but a huge cavern. I had a good time climbing various towers and walls, and just wandering all over the place. It was also interesting seeing the rock needle from the top. Where the drawbridge used to be, a small metal platform has been installed that extends into space over the massive drop, allowing the viewer to appreciate just how impressive this thing is.

Another interesting thing that happened while I was at the Salah Ed-Din Castle (Salah Ed-Din = Saladin = Muslim general who took the castle from the Crusaders) was that I ran into a big family of Syrians that were really funny. I had noticed that there were some tourists around, but all of them were Arab, which was refreshing. I had only seen two Western girls with cameras (and they were kind of cute so I forgave them for being tourists), and the rest were Syrian or of other Middle Eastern origin. Passing through a tight stone doorway at the same time and in the opposite direction as an elderly Arab woman, I used a very polite word that I actually find myself utilizing pretty often, roughly translated as “go ahead” but in a very courteous way. She did a complete double take, shocked to hear it come from me, and asked how it was that I spoke her language. Before I could even respond, there was a huge crowd of family members around me. I was literally facing about 25 people of various generations, all staring at me. One man spoke English, and the entire family watched while he asked me questions in my language and I answered in his. I was nervous and disconcerted about having such a large audience that was paying such strict attention, so I didn’t talk for as long as I might have otherwise, but it was fascinating to watch all of these people who had probably never heard an American speak Arabic before. They wanted to know what I thought of their country, the castle, the language, Lebanon, and so on. I had to excuse myself from the conversation after a bit because I still felt so awkward with their rapt attention, but it was a rewarding experience.

I took another motorcycle down to Haffa, changed some money, and caught a minibus back to Lattakia to gather my belongings and move on. Coincidentally, the white girls that I’d seen up at the castle were in the van as well, so I struck up a conversation with them. It turned out that they were graduate students doing a summer Arabic program in Damascus, and had just been taking a weekend trip to the coast before heading back. They were planning to take a bus back the same day, and were returning to Lattakia to pick up their luggage—at Hotel Safwan. Small town. I chatted with them for a while, which was fun because they were both much better educated and cultured than other Westerners that I’d met there (the Brits at Bab al-Hawa being a good example). It turned out that one was British and had a degree in History and was now studying Law, and the other was from Seattle and studying political science but with a solid focus on Sociology and Anthropology as well. We stuck together for the rest of the day, catching a taxi from the minibus station to Safwan, another one to the actual bus station, and a charter bus for the 4.5 hour ride to Damascus. I hinted that I was in need of lodging if they had anything available or knew anyone, but they regretfully informed me that they were staying with host families and guests weren’t really an option. I did however exchange contact information with Heather, the Seattle girl, and it’d be nice to run into her back in the Northwest.

…..

As I said, I’m back home now, adjusting to life in America. I will make a few posts about this trip, covering Damascus and the return home, and then I haven’t decided what to do with this blog. I might take a break from it, might just use it to comment on news stories (Saad Hariri is going to be PM in Lebanon by the way, and I don’t want to talk about it), might turn it into a personal blog, or come up with some other use for it. We’ll see what it turns into. It’s been quite a ride, though. Cheers.

Neil