After a full day of travel that involved no less than five different busses, two failed attempts to hire taxis, and the omnipresent semi-continuous activation of my gag reflex in response to liberal middle eastern hygiene, I arrive at the Syrian border (sans visa) with my two traveling companions: a Belgian girl who as far as I can tell, speaks decent Turkish, and a Japanese guy who everyone can tell, speaks excellent Japanese.
The Belgian girl, named Gabrielle, I’d met in Cappadocia in a town called Goreme. She was heading in the same direction I was, and seeing as how she speaks some Turkish, she could only be seen as an asset. Along the way, she divulged to me that her first kiss was at age 25. I’m guessing there haven’t been too many in the two years since, either. The Japanese student, whose name was something very Asian-sounding, I’d met in the Alana bus terminal. He was wandering around looking extremely confused, and through his broken English was able to convey that he too was on his way to Aleppo, Syria. I took it upon myself to invite him along with us, as Gabrielle is hardly an asset I’m feeling compelled to monopolize.
Once we finally approach the border, amid a teeming bus of nondescript pilgrims, whom the bus had picked up on the side of a highway in complete darkness, the three of us are directed towards the office of the guard on duty. He is a man of average height and build, with an above-average mustache and hard eyes. His colleague, a younger man who almost looks white, sits down directly in front of the Japanese guy:
“Where are you from?” he asks in a deliberately thick western accent.
“Japan”
“Do you know… Jackie Chan?”
The officer on duty (lets call him Rollie - as in Fingers - you know, because of the mustache) motions for us to sit down, and after learning where we were all from, assures Gabrielle and Jackie Chan that they’ll get their visas shortly. I, on the other hand, must await word from Damascus, which could take anywhere from one to three hours.
At this point, Rollie offers us to have some of his chicken schnitzel and chips. Gabrielle and Jackie do the sensible thing and politely decline. I, realizing I could be at this border station for the foreseeable future, while also assuming that accepting the offer may make me seem more like someone they may want to invite into their country, hungrily dig in. And let me just say that it tasted EXACTLY like every other schnitzel I’ve ever had in my life. Jackie and Gabrielle look at me mystified as I am eating at a pace far beyond Rollie’s. It’s about 8pm, it’s too dark to see your feet outside, there’s no food elsewhere in the border station, as it’s a Muslim holiday (so things are likely to be closed anyway). Schnitzel was perhaps the only sustenance I’d be seeing for the foreseeable future.
My two companions get their visas and are prodded by the bus driver to either opt to stay with me at the border, or get back on the bus, the last to pass through the border station until sundown the following day. Not much of a decision, really. I check my pockets and realize I have exactly ten Turkish lira, or not enough to buy a coffee much less a visa, and Gabrielle offers to lend me 50 euro. Faced with no other options, I agree and offer to Paypal her the money when next I have the chance. I say thanks and goodbye and kiss her on the cheek, which in her prudish world is probably a precursor to anal.
They leave. The border station is a huge narrowing room with linoleum floors and dirty white cinder walls, and is completely empty save for a half-dozen guards and clerks. I set off on a mission to convert my euros to local currency. The only exchange bureau unpredictably raises a stink because there is a tiny tear in one of the bills near the top-left corner. Recognizing this as being completely illogical, I storm off in search of the only other place to exchange money; a bar/restaurant across the driveway, which also unwaveringly rejects me.
I am blown away. Astonishment is not even the word. At this stage, if I am unable to unload this 50 euro note, I will be forced to either take a taxi about 150 km (one way, which I’m guessing would cost roughly $200 round trip) back into Turkey just to go to an ATM, wait roughly 20 hours and take a bus, or make a run for it. Making a run for it, especially in Syria as a money-clutching, hooknose Jew (their probable point of view, not mine), is not advisable. The irony in the size of the rip compared to the problem it is causing is simply legendary.
It occurs to me that in a land where the currency converts at a rate of about 1,400 Syrian pounds to one shit stain in my underwear, that rejecting a 50 euro note on the basis of a 10 micrometer tear is like a desperate trucker rejecting the advances of a hot, southern college co-ed because he objects to her fake Gucci handbag. My tolerance for the absurd has never been so tested.
I corner Jackie Chan Superfan and after some karate-ish gesticulations that I’m sure he found amusing, I manage to lobby him to protest the exchange bureau on my behalf. He succeeds, albeit at a rate that would seem horribly unfair under any other circumstances, and I’m now liquid enough to buy a visa, should I be granted one.
In a vacant border station, hours creep by at a pace that feels as though time is actually moving backwards in order to taunt you. Each tick of the clock comes as painstakingly as a blip on Terry Shiavo’s heart monitor. In three hours, all five of the people that have been processed at the border have come and gone briskly and efficiently. Apparently, no one is foolish enough to attempt to cross into a Muslim country on a Muslim holiday. This news serves to discourage my pioneering spirit, as I begin wondering what the likelihood is that I’ll be sleeping the entire night on the stiffly ribbed blended polymer bench I’ve now warmed to the temperature of my narrow ass and thighs.
I’m fiendishly smoking cigarettes solely as a way to quantify time in units other than minutes and hours. Forlorn glances at Rollie through the window of his office are met with wry smiles and eventually a sardonically deliberate closing of his wilted horizontal blinds. A fax machine in the office nearest my bench sits idle. I am so alone that I actually laugh out loud just to hear the echo laugh back at me mockingly.
I’ve been carrying Jonathan Franzen’s “How to Be Alone” for weeks after book-swapping it in Istanbul. Despite its timely poignancy, I don’t even have the strength to open it. I lie down and expectantly wait for my iPod battery to die.
I am awoken to a knock on the glass of the office with the fax machine. Rollie is beaming. He beckons me into his office, and I dance/shimmy towards him to the beat of some bad Arabic pop song he is playing through the speaker on his old, worn Nokia cell phone. I’m going to Syria. Now all I have to do is get there.
Rollie sets me up with a guy who will walk me to a taxi, each person engaged in the transaction cunningly getting a piece of the little remaining cash I have left to spend. The time is shortly before 2am, almost six hours since arriving at the border. The taxi costs all but 13 shitstains of the money I have left on me. I get in to the taxi without hesitation. Get me the fuck to Aleppo, stat.
Four minutes after getting into the car, I am in a thick cloud of buyer’s remorse. This guy must have caught hell from the missus for going out at such an ungodly hour. He was hitting speeds in his late 1970’s model Peugeot that even I wouldn’t dream of reaching back in the days when I would angrily race my Audi A4 down the Pulaski Skyway after a workday. He is all over the road. The middle yellow line is merely a suggestion of best practices as we tear toward Aleppo, experiencing g-forces I’m sure have only before been seen at NASA training facilities.
He drops me at what must be considered the dodgiest corner in Aleppo. There are vagrants and mangy animals everywhere. The hotel I booked is nowhere in sight, but he assures me it is a block towards the center. I set off and after walking around for 20 minutes at 2:30am in pretty much the nastiest part of any town I’ve ever been in, it occurs to me that the sign for my hotel is most likely in Arabic, and I have no chance of finding it, especially at this hour and with any remaining energy quickly slipping away.
Fucked again, I happen across the place Jackie Chan said he was staying at. He did warn me that it was only $4/night and that it was probably horrendous, but at this point, all I want is a room with a lock on the door. Room optional.
After waiting nearly twenty minutes for the desk clerk to escape into the night with my passport and return with what is probably a very good imitation of what I initially gave him, I am led through a narrow walkway to a door with an unconvincing lock clinging to molding that loosely holds together its paper-thin paneling. Security, evidently, is discretionary.
As the clock stalks 3am, the doors part to reveal two dusty beds shivering in the frigid cold captured by a room that looked eerily similar to the border station I’d left behind. Linoleum and cinder are clearly not materials to consider when insulating oneself from winter weather, yet a glut of these resources evidently exist in Syria.
Exhausted, I take the room. The bathroom down the hall makes me think that although I’m filthy, it can only make matters worse. Instead, I put on three layers of clothing, a wool knit cap, and blankets from both beds as I lay down and fall asleep to the resonance of my chattering spine.
The next morning I awaken to beaming broad daylight and a throbbing left eye. Upon further inspection I can see (with my good eye) that my left eye is almost completely swollen shut. I curse the wool cap, Jackie Chan (the Japanese guy and the real Jackie Chan), the hotel clerk, and the Prophet Mohammed as I set out in search of money, a decent meal, and a worthy distraction (hoping my eye improves on it’s own).
A quick stroll around Aleppo’s center tells me the following:
A) ATM’s are difficult to find
B) This Muslim holiday has shut nearly all places of business
C) Aleppo is a filthy shithole
D) The combination of having white skin and one mutant eyeball is enough for people to openly stare
I opt immediately to bail the hell out of Aleppo. The next bus out of town was later that day, and I had little poofs of smoke blasting from my heels on my way to the bus station. Aleppo, fuck off.
After several hours of sleep in the seat directly behind the driver -- underscored by the tinny blare of a grainy Syrian television show -- I awake to the bus pulling into a roadside truck stop. Commonly this is accompanied by a 30 minute stop for food, toilet, chain-smoking, and latent confusion.
Once toilet and snacks were satisfactorily taken care of (I could have used a seat in the toilet, if you're picking up what I'm laying down), I exit the dingy restaurant to the vacant parking lot. Bus: Gone.
Recognizing that openly panicking only makes me a target for unwanted attention, I firmly puff my first cigarette. I begin having thoughts of "Shit, is there even a US embassy in Damascus?" as I watch the minutes waft by. After two hurried cigarettes, I begin looking around for familiar faces while cursing my front seat assignment (as I was unable to recognize anyone for lack of turning around while en route).
Finally, my confused state and constant head-swiveling attracted attention indeed, as someone who recognized
me (for once, it helped being the only white guy on public transport) assured me that the bus would return. Which, after another cigarette, it finally did.
From there, I spent five days in Damascus, which was a pretty cool city with some dodgy nightlife that I only took part in half-heartedly. In a muslim city where women aren't allowed out at night, the club scene generally tends to suffer.
In all, there was much more in Syria I wished I could have seen (and given it a fair shot aside from just Aleppo and Damascus), but with a friend meeting me in Tel Aviv shortly thereafter, I had to move forward. So, feel free to visit Syria, just ignore Aleppo. That place can suck it.
Right now, I'm in Maputo, Mozambique having just come off a very cool show at a reggae bar-slash-art gallery. I've been hanging with some of the Mozambican guys I met in Tofo and a surfer from Durban and been having a real solid time in the south here. Ed is meeting me on Thursday and on Monday we head into Kruger National Park. More lions, baby! Rowr!!!
