Through the souk, skirting the Great Mosque, along Straight Street and past Ananias’s house (where the scales fell from St Paul’s eyes); there was somebody I had to find in the warren of streets and alleyways in the old walled city of Damascus. There’s no mention of him in the guidebooks, but I’d heard the rumours more than once. Would he still be there?
After being jostled by various small boys selling mint tea and old men pushing carts, and with the waft of perfume and spices on the breeze, I finally discovered what I was looking for. By the gate of the Azem Palace was a shop selling traditional blue tiles, marquetry boxes, Armenian filigree, Iranian carpets and the elaborate brocade work so typical of Damascus. But one thing set this shop (under the sign of “George Dabdoub”) apart from all the others: it was the last Jewish business left in Syria.
Selim and David Hamadami’s family are among the final five Jewish families remaining in the country - just 19 people, all aged over 40 and none with any children. In 1948 there were 30 000 Jews in Damascus, but most departed in the 1990s when President Assad granted exit visas. There is a single working synagogue but the Jewish quarter remains only in name.
David lives in Brooklyn, but comes to Damascus sometimes to help his brother in the shop. So why does Selim stay on this country, which Israel accuses of arming its great enemy Hizbollah? There is a simple answer: his family have been here for 600 years. His father Joseph ran the family business before him and he gets no trouble in this most multicultural and tolerant of Middle Eastern cities. Besides, business is good, so why go?
‘Well, at least it’ll be a cheap trip’
I arrived in Syria’s capital city last month, the weekend after the Israelis had claimed to have bombed what they said was a Syrian nuclear site. George Bush had already struck fear into the heart of any potential tourist to the country by proclaiming it part of his “axis of evil”. So there were the predictable gags from friends. “Well, at least it’ll be a cheap trip,” said one. “You won’t have to pay your air fare back.”
In fact, my trip turned out to be a serene journey of discovery into the heart of one of the most misrepresented countries on the planet. Untouched by mass tourism (particularly now timid US citizens no longer visit), and with courteous and hospitable people, Syria has a heritage that could hardly be richer or more diverse. In the fertile Euphrates valley, civilisation itself was born. Christianity was nurtured during its early days in the Syrian cities of Antioch and Damascus, and Islam was moulded in the Umayyad court of Damascus - the oldest continuously occupied city in the world. When the Prophet Mohammed first viewed the city, he would not pass through the gates because, he said, Man could enter paradise only once.
By Mohammed’s time, the Hittites and Hurrians, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Canaanites, Persians, Nabateans, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines had already passed through, leaving behind castles, churches, temples, mosques and deserted cities - a wealth of almost unrivalled historical grandeur. This is not to mention the Crusaders, Ottomans and French who came later.
‘Do not tell your wife where you have hidden your money’
Today’s Syria is a place of paradoxes. Nowhere is it ever quite what it seems. Contrary to popular opinion, it is a secular society and not an Islamic state, and 15 percent of the population are Christian. Many Syrians will talk openly about politics, whether the inbuilt corruption of their own system or the desirability of electing Hillary Clinton. You are just as likely to encounter women wearing a burqa in parts of Derby as in central Damascus, where young women are happy to wear jeans and T-shirts. (Street stalls seem to be festooned with women’s underwear.) Nor is it primarily a desert country. Much of the population lives in the green, fruit-filled, land bordering the Mediterranean, and parts of Syria have more rain than the UK. Alcohol is openly permitted - and many of the wines available are delicious, including vintages from Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. Outside military sites there are few restrictions on foreigners, and the country is refreshingly low on crime.
So, casting aside White House paranoia, I chased the ghosts of kings and queens, gods and goddesses, warriors and traders across thousands of kilometres and 5 000 years of history. At Mari on the Iraq border, I stood in the mud where civilisation began on the site of a vast Bronze Age city. Here the mighty King Zimri-Lim ruled from a 300-room palace built entirely from clay and straw. From there I travelled to the remains of the vast city-state of Ebla, dating from the fourth century BC. Below my feet were the shards of a civilisation so old that it was already in the dimmest recesses of history when Mark Antony was governor of the country 2 000 years ago.
In the richness of the ruins of ancient Syria, it is possible to stumble across both the superlative and the bizarre. In the great Hellenistic city of Dura-Europos is one of the the earliest Christian churches, dating from 231. At the Mediterranean city of Ugarit, what could be the world’s first alphabet was discovered on clay tablets in the palace archives, dating from the 14th century BC. One tablet reads: “Do not tell your wife where you have hidden your money.” On a magnificent site across the mountains, is the world’s best-preserved Crusader castle, the Krak des Chevaliers. At the shrine of St Simeon Stylites, there are still the remains of the 64ft pillar: this most bizarre of ascetics stayed perched on top of it, with an iron chain round his neck, rain and shine, for the last 30 years of his life.
Most evocative of all is the mighty oasis city of Palmyra - the “Venice of the sands” - where the ghosts of traders of silks, spices and ebony from the east still seem to stalk the ruined streets. I stay in a hotel set amid the ruins and watch the shadow of the moon flit over the ghostly classical remains of the Temple of Baal Shamin. The hotel is named after the beautiful warrior-queen Zenobia. As great in her day as Cleopatra, she conquered Egypt from her desert HQ with an army of 70 000, before being defeated by the Emperor Aurelian and carried off to Rome in chains of gold. At dawn I watched the sun rise as a camel train loped slowly through the great Roman colonnade - a sight unchanged in millennia.
There were modern ghosts, too. At my hotel in Palmyra, one of the staff whispered that Mata Hari once stayed here. And sure enough, in her suite, there was still the ancient Bakelite phone on which she would call her spymasters. In the now down-at-heel Hotel Baron in the red light district of Aleppo, Agatha Christie wrote most of Murder on the Orient Express (in the days when the train used to run to such exotic destinations) while her archaeologist husband was out on digs.
I had a Campari on the terrace where TE Lawrence used to shoot ducks. Unlike him, I paid for my drink - his unpaid bar bill from 1914 is still framed in the foyer.
A few days later, I had my own Lawrence of Arabia moment, when I took one of the now very rare services on the Hejaz Railway south from Damascus to Amman, where a train is famously derailed in David Lean’s epic film. As our ancient steam loco, with its three-century-old wooden coaches, wheezed through the desert, there was a sudden slam of brakes and a whoosh of steam. Dozens of figures in military gear were racing towards us. Surely not Peter O’ Toole, Omar Sharif and their band of Arab warriors? More mundanely, it was a bunch of Syrian soldiers whose electricity supply we had snagged. But the picture of them waving, smiling and cheering us on our way after clearing the tracks would have made a wonderful postcard to the White House. “Dear George, wish you were here…”
If you go…
Getting there
The writer travelled with Andante Travels (www.andantetravels.co.uk) which offers the 11-day “From the Hauran to the Euphrates” trip from �1 785 (about R25 000). It includes return Syrian Arab Airlines flights from Heathrow to Damascus, transfers, accommodation with all meals, sightseeing, admission costs and a steam-train trip on the Hejaz Railway.
More info
Passports bearing an Israeli stamp are not permitted for entry.
Syria Tourism: www.syriatourism.org
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