My plan was to leave Tuesday morning, get there in the mid-afternoon, spend the rest of the day as well as the next exploring the city, and then head home Thursday morning. Just a quick strike if you will, and then back to Beirut for Thursday night and the long Easter weekend. But other forces had other plans, and I didn't get back to my apartment until Saturday night. There was no Syriana or Body of Lies type stuff going down (luckily, I'm not that important), but still there are some lessons to be learned for Americans wanting to travel overland from Beirut to Damascus on Easter weekend.
I woke up by way of alarm at the ungodly hour of 9 am, fixin to take a shower, have breakfast, get down to Charles Helou Bus Station, and be on a bus for Damascus by noon. That would put me in the city sometime around 4 or 5 pm- enough time to putz around with some daylight, get my bearings, grab some dinner, and retire at a decent hour to have a full day tomorrow. I already had my hotel booked.
The Charles Helou Bus Station
Now, ever since I got to Beirut, I have been at war with the cab drivers here. I actually was going to write a post about it, where its starts, “Sorry mom and dad, Lebanon is a war- and your son is right in the middle...”, but due to an event that would transpire later, it would not be the case. Still though, going into the weekend, I was presently at war. Almost like someone snuck into my room and tattooed “dickhead” on my forehead, the cab drivers seem convinced in their minds that I am gonna make them a pile of money in the form of a huge ripoff. They get infuriated when they find out that I know how much I am supposed to be charged and when I laugh at their price and counter with the real price, they say things like, “fuck you” and “fuck your country!” (whichever one, I am not sure they're sure of).
Somehow I negotiated a price with a cabbie to the bus station that we both thought was fair. It was overpriced, but not out-and-out rapage. He dropped me off across the street, but before all the buses is a taxi stand. I got out of the cab and they descended upon me like mustacheod piranhas. “No bus today, how much you pay for cab?” was the common refrain. “How much you pay?” But I knew the score, I knew there were buses. So I headed to them. I found the next one leaving for Damascus. I gave a little man my passport and he scurried away. Now, you must always be careful with your passport, especially in an environment such as this, but in “uncivilized situations” sometimes you gotta trust your gut. So I did.
The bus was to leave at 11:30, but that was Arab time (sorry Arabs) and I knew it would be a while. Regardless, I hopped in to secure my seat. Inside, there was a nice Irish family already settled in the back of the minibus. A mom, a dad, and the little girl. For some reason, in “uncivilized situations” it helps to have some other white people around for comfort. Actually, any Europeans or Americans will do, complexion is just obvious visual clue. Its not so much the skin color thats comforting, its coming from similar places, with similar expectations. If there's trouble, it will be similar trouble. In a situation like this where there is chaos and uncertainty and we could all get ripped off at any moment, it helps that there are others around to get ripped off with you, or whatever. Because if there is trouble, your common interests and background will help provide a common avenue in which to extract yourself from said situation. Strength in number, we're all in this together, and such.
But there would be not trouble, only a lot of waiting. In the meantime, I had to use the lavatory. In some movie, there is a scene where this guy goes into a bathroom and the toilet is labeled “Worst Toilet in London”. Well, that scene entered my mind as I walked into the bathroom at Beirut's Charles Helou Bus Station. There were two stalls. I walked into the first stall and there was an ungodly mess. Squat toilet (always a disaster), flies, defecation, both piled and sprayed, in every direction. I am not sure if I was imagining stink-lines, but they were real enough to me. “Dear god”, I thought, “I don't care what is in the next stall, I am peeing there and that's all there is too it. I don't care if there is the same mess with a decapitated human head sitting on top, I'm gonna pee right on it.”
Now, I'm not squeamish. I have seen some foul messes in my day and have been in some unpleasant situations. I have seen the great masses of humanity relieving themselves in concert in India. I have slept in the Ryan Air terminal in London's Luton Airport. I have partied at college apartments in Boston. None of these are for the faint of heart. But ladies and gentleman, I will tell you this: when I opened the door to the second stall and saw what there was to see there, I closed the door and immediately went back to stall number one. And I did it quickly, and happily, and secure in myself that I was making the right decision. Its not for me to describe it here- I'm not sure I can- but I will say it was like opening the door to turd hell, and I have been trying to purge it from memory ever since.
I came out of the building having aged approximately five years. The guy who took my passport was standing in his little office, and he must have seen the look of bewilderment on my face because he brought over some spray disinfectant and hosed my hands down with it. Then he looked at me with eyes that said, “I am sorry you had to see that, mister. I know you are disgusted. This is the the bathroom of my workplace, and I am embarrassed.” He handed me a tissue and I got on the minibus. The last thing I will say about it is this: the man who walked into that bathroom is not the same man who walked out. That man is gone and he's not coming back.
I got back on the bus and the Irishman got out to do the same. I didn't stop him, it was something he had to see for himself. He got back on the bus five minutes later with the same look on his face. With that lovely Irish accent, his wife was asking him if everything was okay as the driver shut the doors and whisked us away.
A range of small mountains separates Lebanon from Syria. I put on my Ipod and settled in as we traversed it all. The scenery was beautiful and the view was for miles. I snapped pictures along the way of things I thought were interesting and before too long, we arrived at the border. I remembered what Droopy at the Syrian embassy had told me. In a thick Syrian accent, “one hour, three hours, five hours, six hours”. What the hell did that mean?
Before going into one country, you must leave another. This formality of getting an “exit visa” gives the immigration officials a chance to see if they want to let you out, which is no guarantee. Maybe you are wanted by the police, or maybe you didn't pay your hotel bill, or maybe you are a known spy. No of these applied to me, so they stamped my passport and sent me out.
For some reason, there is about a mile distance between the Lebanese border and the Syrian. I don't know whose land that would be, perhaps just some sort of buffer. I didn't ask and soon enough we were at the Syrian border. Someone should have told me to get comfortable.
The Syrian Border
One the minibus with me were the driver, his assistant, three Irish, two Arabs and two Spaniards. The Europeans and the Arabs were issued visas post haste. But when I handed over my passport, the official said that I would have wait. He said that he would have to send a fax (a fax!) to Damascus (the capital) and they would let him know if it was safe to let me into his country. Then he said those words that sent chills up my spine. “One hour, three hours, five hours, six hours.” I felt like the detective at the end of the Usual Suspects as he dropped his coffee mug in shock and disbelief. Right away, I knew it would not be one hour, three hours or five hours. It would be six. I knew it and I resigned myself to it right away. Dashed from my schedule were dinner in Damascus, putzing around the city, and getting my bearings. Without an option, I pulled the trigger and told the driver and the group to go on without me. I had some cash, a credit card, and my passport. I'm an American, for god sake. I would be fine and I would make it to Damascus alone somehow. My experience roaming the planet gave me the confidence I needed to strand myself at the Syrian border without a ride until the bastards let me in.
A man I met while on a jungle trek in Thailand once told me “if you have no plans, nothing can go wrong”. This was my first time overseas alone. I have never forgot it and it has shaped me as a traveler. I always try to keep it in mind when I am “out in the world”, especially in “developing” countries. So much stuff can happen, and does happen, that its not worth the gray hairs to be dead set in a schedule. This is why I abandoned my plans for that evening so easily.
What was not so easy was figuring out how I was supposed to kill six hours at a goddamn border crossing. I saw a couch in a little room so I went to sleep for a while. I woke up an hour later. Back a little ways towards Lebanon, there was a duty-free mall and a Dunkin Donuts, so I decided I would make my stand there. I had a look about the mall and it was just like a giant duty-free that you would find at an airport but with very reasonable prices. If I had to spend the night at the border by myself, at least I knew I wouldn't alone. An eighteen dollar liter of Jameson would keep me warm and happy, I thought. Its good to have a worst case scenario. Luckily, it wouldn't come to that.
After the duty free mall, I decided that I could really kill some time in Dunkin Donuts. Some coffee and my book (Oil! By Upton Sinclair, highly recommended) and the time would just melt by. To my dismay, Dunks was closed. Like, for good. Disappointed, but not quite crestfallen, I went into the adjoining cafe and set up shop. A dull headache I had leaving Beirut, had just entered “splitting” territory. I got a tea and prepared as best I could to settle into my book for the next five hours.
Across from me was a couple, from I couldn't tell where. I just know they were from two different places by the looks of them. After a while, the girl came by and asked me if I were an American. I told her I was and we discovered the three of us were in the same position. At the same time I handed over my passport, I had noticed two other USA passports coming across to the official too. It must have been theirs. Sure, they would take me to Damascus with them once we all got squared away. We talked and discovered we were from similar backgrounds. We came from similar industries and lived in similar places. They had been skiing in Farieh, like me. The gentleman, had been badly sunburned there, like me. We had even traveled to many of the same places, like India and Laos. There were so many similarities, as a matter of fact, I later wondered if the two of them weren't of intelligence of one sort or another...I highly doubt it, but it was strange to have so much in common. Plus, I like wondering about these things because it makes me feel cool and important.
Anyway, we passed the time sharing stories and lamenting our common situation. They had hired a driver who, having made the mistake of agreeing ahead of time to wait as long as it takes at the border, was also stuck in our boat. Later, he would admit that this would be the last time he would take Americans to Damascus. Poor guy, it was his first attempt and he didn't know how Syrians felt about Americans.
The USA and Syria just aren't on good terms. A Syrian couldn't just show up at the USA border and demand entrance, no sir. He would have to start the process at home, waiting long periods of time and providing only the proper documents. And then, only if he was lucky. So Syria is not happy with this, but they don't want to keep Americans out completely. It would look hostile and plus, Americans will spend good money at their hotels, restaurants, and gift shops. It wouldn't be prudent. But they have to do something, so they make you wait two to six hours for a visa. It 's supposed to take you down down a peg, I guess.
I had resigned myself to the six hours end, but one of us would go over every hour on the hour to check just for good measure. Annoying them while they're annoying us is the least we could do. Every hour an American would storm over to the immigration office and demand in the most indignant tones, “please sir, have you heard any word from Damascus yet?”, at which point the hardened bureaucrat would shake his head and tell you to have a seat. After five tries and five hours of this strategy, he finally buckled under our requests. At exactly 9 pm, exactly six hours after we handed him our passports, he handed them back to us with our visa stamps. Weary from battle and gracious in victory, we didn't rub his nose in it. We got the hell out of there and made straight for Damascus.
I am sure that whatever happened, I would have made it to Damascus eventually, but meeting those two made things so much more pleasant. Its people like that you meet while traveling that keep me coming back. Six hours ago we were complete strangers, and now the three of us were quietly zooming through the darkness towards Damascus together, as friends. I love it.
When I finally got into my hotel room at 10 pm- twelve hours after I left my apartment -I dropped to my knees and praised god I was at my destination. My bed looked so comfy, my bathroom was new and clean, my TV flat, my cable satellite, my internet free and wireless...I had made it, and it felt good. My headache was subsiding. I crawled into bed with a smile on my face and passed out.
The next day I got breakfast (included) at my hotel (the Afamia, highly recommended) and headed out to see what there was to see. Damascus is an ancient city, often billed as the longest continually inhabited in the world. Mountains are on one side and dessert on the other. Its dusty and crowded and awesome. The oldest part of the city is a maze of adjoining stone houses and winding alleyways. Throughout are souqs, or shops, selling everything from jewels to spices to textiles to coffee beans to antiques to housewares. In the middle of the old city is the Ommayad mosque, one of the oldest and most holy of Islam. John the Baptist is buried there. Saladin, the legendary Muslim general of the Crusades who tossed the Europeans out of Jerusalem is buried there. Ali Hussein, a pillar of Shia Islam is buried there. The place is amazing and I was ecstatic to get all my formal historical sight seeing done at one location. The rest of the time I could spend just people watching and putzing around, which is really my favorite way to get to know a place.
The Syrian People
Damascus feels like an outpost. Sure its a huge city, one of the major world capitals of history, but its in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, Google Maps it. This is why a city of 5 million or so can feel isolated (the other reason is government interference. The Syrian government doesn't like outsiders and outsider ideas, like human rights and democracy. This is why Facebook and Youtube is blocked.) This isolation, in my opinion is not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, the people are very poor, but whose to say that this would not be the case with due process, habeus corpus, and elected leaders? Isolation from the outside world, both physically and digitally, has allowed the people of Damascus to retain their tradition as well a sense of innocence that you don't find in flashy and style-conscious Beirut. I have been thinking this over, and I think the Syrian people are the nicest people that I have ever met anywhere in the world (sorry Laos).
The people I met were so warm and welcoming, and for no reason at all. Everywhere in the city, people stopped and smiled and chatted...and you weren't even sure that they knew each other. And people didn't look at me like an ATM for once. It was nice.
For example, I was having a sheisha (flavored tobacco smoked out of a hookah) and a coffee at a cafe in the old city, when I started chatting with the guy next to me. He told me welcome to his city and I tried my best to communicate in Arabic. He told me about a good place just outside the city on a hill where you can look down and see the city. I looked it up in my Lonely Planet guide book and his story checked out. He said he would take me up there and show me. Then he mentioned that he had a cab, at which point I thought, “oh geez, here we go”(this was before I knew how nice Syrians were). Then he said that the cab he owned was in use, but he would go up with me anyhow to make sure I got there and paid the right price for the cab. So we hailed a cab and went up. The view was incredible and he pointed out some stuff. I snapped some photos. I had the cab drop me off at the hotel. I shook his hand and he would only let me pay for my half of the cab. And that was that, just some of that decent Arab hospitality I'd heard so much about.
Everyone else was just as nice. If I approached someone who kinda looked like a grump for some directions, their face would turn completely into a gigantic smile as I requested their assistance, which they were only too happy to dole out. When looking for something, I would often be escorted right to it. And I never felt unsafe walking anywhere at any time of the day or night. I'm not sure what the cops do all day, because these people surely aren't making any trouble. The whole thing actually made me reconsider my position on the oppressive Assad regime; surely a society that produces people this nice must be doing something right.
I washed up and met up with the American couple for a coffee at the same cafe I was at earlier that day. We watched the “last” traditional storyteller in Damascus perform. It was common, like 500 years ago, for guys to go to sheisha bars and listen to someone tell a story, kinda like guys today going to the bar to watch a game. Now the art is all but forgotten and its down to one man. Performs nightly at seven for tourists and locals alike.
After we'd had enough, we split for dinner at the Four Seasons. Now, I am not a high roller by any stretch, but prices in Syria- especially for food- are incredibly reasonable, especially compared with Lebanon. And the occasion seemed sort of like a celebration, having all of us made it to Damascus and such. I stuffed my face with some of the best food I have ever had, most of it Syrian. The bill for the three of us was less than a hundred US dollars. We swapped stories about our days and shared a cab back to our hotels, which were close by to each other. Early the next day they would be headed to Allepo and I back to Beirut, so we said our goodbyes and I thanked them profusely for their company and assistance.
Trouble
The next day, things got interesting. My hotel did not take credit cards (in the Arab world, cash is king) so I needed to find an ATM, which wouldn't be too difficult because I had seen many. So I walked to the closest one and put my card in. It wouldn't work. I tried the one next to it. And then one at another bank. And another and another. None worked. Finally, a bank employee told me I had to try one of the international banks, like Audi Bank and Saudi Bemo Bank. But none of those worked either.
Alarmed, I went back home and Skyped my bank to see if my card was blocked only find out that Syria did not take Master Card at the moment. Shit. My next thought was to use my Visa credit card to get a cash advance at a bank, but they were all closed by this time. And tomorrow was out, because in Syria, Friday was the off day, not Sunday. I tried to get a cash advance at a foreign exchange place, but they wanted a hundred dollars for every three hundred withdrawn, which was a thousand percent out of the question. I would rather sleep naked in stall number two at Beirut's Charles Helou Bus Station before I'd do that. I Even went back to the Four Seasons to see if they would do a cash advance, but they said it was just for hotel customers. Dammit.
I wracked my brain. What the hell was I going to do? I knew that starting tonight, my hotel was booked solid for the next few weeks. I had no choice, I took my predicament to my hotel manager. He told me which ATMs to try and I told them I tried all of those and a dozen more. He look puzzled, then he said, “no problem, Mr. Patrick, you can stay in your room”. I was relieved that at least I would not be tossed out on the street with no money.
The next morning, in a last ditch effort, I went down to the Western Union to see if I could wire myself some money. Even though it was Friday, the website said it would be open. Not so. I wasn't even sure that I could wire money to myself anyway, but I would try again tomorrow. I went back to the hotel and, in a complete cliché, I called my mom and asked her to send me some money through Western Union. Always on the ready to help her baby, she said of course she would. I went back to my hotel manager with this news, and he arranged another night for me. Some poor bastard got to the hotel that night to find it “overbooked”. (I'd always wondered how this was possible, but now I know.) It was now 11am, however, and without a dime I decided to stay in my hotel room and read all day til dinner time, at which point I would go to a place that took credit cards.
The next day I woke up and said a prayer that my plan would work, as I was completely out of options after this (the guy who wanted to charge 33% on a cash advance did not even make it into my worst case scenario. If it came down to it, I would just go down to the US embassy, if there was one, and beg for money. Failing that, I would have to get a job and live there, at least until my fifteen day visa expired.) I got to the place three minutes before nine and three minutes later it opened for business. The pretty Syrian girl at the counter told me to have a seat while she looked into it. Ten minutes later, I left there with 19000 Syrian pounds, about 400 US dollars, and skipped all the way back to my hotel. I paid the manager his money, gave a good tip to my super helpful bellhop/room cleaner, and took a cab to the bus station.
At the station, I gave some homeless little beggar some money to tell me when my bus was ready to go. The place was kind of confusing and I didn't want to think about it, so it was money well spent. He came to get me when the bus was ready to go. I hopped on and we scooted back towards Lebanon. I was relieved to be getting out of Damascus, but it was bittersweet. Even though I spent four nights there, I feel like I barely scratched the surface. And I'd definitely go back if it wasn't such a gigantic pain in the ass to get in.
I'm Back
As we came over the mountains and I could start to see Beirut sitting by the sea, a sense of relief crept over me. I was coming home and I could see the city right in front of me. I would be home soon...and it was Saturday night! The bus dropped me off near the Sabra Palestinian refugee camp. I had no idea which way Hamra, where I live, was but someone pointed me toward a cab stand. Great, I thought, four hours in a bus and now I have to get ripped of by these mustacheod piranhas. Not back five minutes and I'm gonna find myself in my battle with the Beirut taxi drivers. And that's when it happened. A old man in an old taxi pulled up as I was trying to cross the street to get to the cab stand. I asked if he would take me to Hamra and he said to get in. I asked him how much, and he said “as you wish”. As I wished! I suggest a reasonable price and he said okay. And just like that, my war with the cabbies was over, or at least we are in a détente.
He dropped me off near my place and I took the elevator up to my apartment. I was satisfied by my journey, and I was happy to be back.
what a journey!
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