I walked down the street like an urban virgin.  Concrete sidewalks had challenging terrain features; half caved in manholes accompanied Swiss cheese topography.  I walked down the main street, Rustavelis Gamziri, to the central square.  A five-lane roundabout surrounded the square.  Ladas and BMW’s raced for victory in the surreal Tbilisi 500.

I attempted to cross the street was almost flattened.  I put my head down in defeat, and walked briskly back to the sidewalk to take a time out, and develop a better game plan.  I leaned against a building and studied the masters.  Most people simply flowed across the road while cars swerved insanely closely to their bodies.  I took a deep breath and gave it another go.  I thought I had the knack of it but I got rigid.  About half way across the street I stopped as a car almost clipped me with its mirror.  Once my momentum was lost, so was I.

It reminded me of instances when you are walking down a busy street and someone comes head on.  You go left, they go right, you correct, they correct, and as you both get closer you finally swerve the right way and just barely miss hitting each other.  In the game of Georgian pedestrian, the actions are much the same, except a speeding hunk of steel is your opponent, and the consequences are more than a bumped shoulder.  I eventually reached the other side; honking horns blew out my ears.  I learned that it’s simply better to follow a local like a goose flying in a v-pattern.

I interlaced side streets like a kid on a scavenger hunt.  I looked attentively, and found treasures.  I gazed left and proceeded down a quiet street.  The contrasts were severe.  It looked like a collection of meteorites had landed the week before.  Steam came up from the sewer grates and played as smoldering evidence of the strike.  An old burnt out car rusted into a crater with its wheels torn off.  Trash piled to my left and right; half the windows on the buildings were smashed out.  I walked with awareness, keeping a tight frame on my surroundings.  The skies darkened and a downpour began.  I saw shelter under a balcony and ran over to it.  An older man sought the same coverage; we both stood there without speaking.  He looked at me and noticed my foreignness.  I looked at him and noticed my foreignness.   We both looked straight out at the downpour.

The man and I were stuck in a small place together, and I was happy to stand next to someone from such a different world.  I peered to my left down narrow-street that crashed into a step hillside.  On top of the hill was Kartlis Deda.  The statue of mother Georgia towered mightily over the city.  She looked like a futuristic diva, and possessed the ability to make me feel powerless.

After the downpour stopped, I continued walking.  I cam across a few small Georgian and Armenian churches.  I didn’t feel like pulling out my camera because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.  People looked at me with curiosity.  My movements were dissimilar, and I didn’t flow like water across the street.  I felt like things could go wrong at any time if I let my guard down.

I crossed the Mtkvari River.  On the other side was a huge statue of a knight on a horse with a giant sward in his hand.  The Metekhi church stood behind it high up on a hill.  I walked up to the church.  I turned around and looked out over the city.  Off in the distance up on a plateau was crass evidence from Soviet times: a television broadcast tower that shot up towards the heavens.  It looked like something out of the Jetsons, but with an intimidating edge.  The brown Mtkvari River flowed below.  Cars zoomed around the roads with the nimbleness of ants.

I proceeded back down the hill, over the bridge, and into an Armenian church.  Inside the church I had an English conversation with middle-aged lady.  Communicating in English felt refreshing.  Most Georgians speak a few languages, but English was rare.

A young man entered the church, and he spoke some broken English to me.  He had a slender physique and was dressed in black from shirt to shoes.  His straight black hair parted to one side leaving most of his forehead exposed.  He had a thick 5 o’clock shadow on his face and a wide smile that made his eyes squint.  His name was Grigori.  Two of his friends—Alex and George—entered into the room and joined our conversation.  They were proud of Georgia and happy that I decided to come to their country, but also a little confused.

“Why you not want spend time in France or Italy?” said Grigori.

I replied quickly, “I heard Georgia had an interesting history and fascinating people.”

Their smiles enlarged.

We sat and drank coffee while talking about Georgia.

“Peter,” Alex said.  “You like to hear us sing?”

I nodded my head and smiled.

“Follow, upstairs.”

I followed Girgory, Alex, and George upstairs to a small room.  George sad down and started playing piano.  Alex and Grigori chimed in and they all sang together in Georgian.  They passionately belted out a song with skill.  Grigory went very low with his voice while Alex’s voice was at the opposite end of the spectrum.  George kept the two together while playing the piano beautifully.  They sang a handful of songs.

“What you think?” said Grigory.

“Wow, you guys are amazing.”

“Would you like come to my church?” Grigory said.

He pointed out of the window.  There is it, other side river, not far,”

I shook my head and agreed.  I said goodbye to Alex and George.  Grigory and I left and walked out on the street.  I felt satisfied to have already met a local who wanted to show me around.

“Peter you like Georgian food?”

“I’m not sure Grigory; I haven’t had it yet.”

“Ok, come with me!”

Grigory picked up the pace on the sidewalk and walked down a staircase the led to a basement level restaurant.  This would have been an impossible find on my own.

“Peter, you like Kachapuri?” Grigory asked me like it was a common worldwide dish.

“I’m not sure what it is, but I’ll try it.”

Grigory ordered me Kachapuri.  It came out piping hot and was a dish of fresh doughy bread with egg, cheese, and butter in the middle of it.  It was about a foot long on a large plate.  Grigory also gave me a drink that tasted like a fruit/ginger combination.  When we were done, Grigory refused for me to pay for the meal.

“Peter, you are my guest, and guest don’t pay when with Grigory.”

We walked out across the wide Mtkvari River and up a hillside.  Girgory crossed the street—I sprinted up to him so I could stay on his heels.  His tall lanky physique got gumbi-like once he started crossing the road; his torso gyrated on a different plane than his hips.  His neck had the ability to crane out into the traffic (like go go gadget neck) to get a better view without moving his feet.  Cars weaved around us closely.  Grigory broke through fresh ground like an icebreaker; I stayed closely within his wake.  His hips gyrated back towards me as a mirror almost smacked his midsection.

When we got to Grigory’s church he introduced me to the father and a few other men in the clergy.  Grigory had a high position in the church and lead the daily prayer and song.  I sat in one of the back pews as a spectator.  Dim light showed signs of wear; deteriorated walls made it high up to the stained ceiling.  The offering bin came around, and everyone dug deep into their pockets to add to it.  The older lady next to me put in a single coin in, and passed it on.

I won’t be returning from Georgia and Ukraine until the 20th of July.  Next Motley Planet post wont happen for a while since we will be capturing footage from high up in the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea coast, wine country, or the capital Tbilisi.  If anyone knows anyone at the travel channel let me know.

“Peter, where you staying tonight?”

“I am staying with Mama Nasi; an older lady that has a guesthouse.”

“Oh…” he said.  “If you like you can stay with my family.  We live in different neighborhood, but is good place.”

Grigory was a nice guy and had taken a good part of his day to show me around. I knew it would be a great experience to get to closer to local culture.  And like other times during this epic journey I was invited to be part of the game instead of being a tourist.

“Sure,” I said.”

We can go out now; my mother cooks diner.

“Okay, but we have to go back to Mama Nasi’s and get my stuff,” I said.

When we got back to Mama Nasi’s she was sitting on the porch smiling.   “Gamor jobt Peter,” (hello) she said as I walked up the stairs.

I sat down on the bench next to Mama Nasi and attempted to tell her that I would be leaving for the night.  She couldn’t completely understand me so she looked at Grigory for an explanation.  Grigory spoke to her in Georgian and her smile lost its life.   Mama Nasi thought Grigory was trying to compete for her five-dollars a night.  She looked like a disgruntled grandmother who was about to discipline her grandchild, that being me.

I started packing and couldn’t help but notice that Mama Nasi rummaged though my backpack.  Small chocolate crumbs lay on the floor, and a large part of my toilet paper roll was gone.  My chocolate was almost finished.  I left Mama Nasi’s thanking her; she gave me a half-hearted smile in return.  I still paid her for the night even though I wasn’t staying.  I knew I’d be back eventually and needed to stay on good terms.

Grigory and I reached the nearest subway station.   I approached the station and went through the door.  I literally walked through the door because it was closed and I didn’t open it.  This was only possible because of the missing glass; the entrance was a big metal door frame with a handle.

The Tbilisi subway felt Soviet, and descended like Moscow’s for an eternity into the earth’s lithosphere.  It had all of the same features like gold trimmed lights, old ladies waiting at the bottom of the escalator in little huts half asleep, and blue subway cars.  But Tbilisi’s subway was worn down—filthy and dark.  It was the most depressing subway—one of the most depressing places—I’d seen.  Flickering lights exposed faces hardened by difficult lives.  Old ladies sold everything imaginable, from batteries to soccer balls, and walked back and forth in the subway cars like zombies with almost every bit of life squeezed out of them.  Little scrubby kids came through with ripped up shirts and shoes, and sang with depressed screeches for pennies.

Not a word was spoken amongst the passengers.  The lights flickered in-between stations; sometimes to the point of darkness for a few seconds that seemed more like minutes. The eerie squealing of the breaks pierced my ears and sounded like a sound effect from Children of the Corn.  The crookedness of the tracks rocked me aggressively in my hard seat.  If I had decided to fall asleep, and relax my neck, my head would have smashed through the window.  But like the Moscow’s subway Tbilisi’s subway doubled as a bomb shelter.  It moved at high-speed, and had doors with the capability of dicing a human in half upon closure without much warning.

When the U.S.S.R. dissolved, “freedom” came, but with a vacuum of insecurity.  Rule of law washed away along with livable pensions.  The elderly got hit the worst.  I could see through downcast faces on the subway, nostalgia was there for Soviet times.

Grigory and I got off at the last subway stop.  His neighborhood was unbelievably poor.  Every building looked like a 1.7 magnitude earthquake could have leveled it.  Some of them even looked like Jenga puzzles with solid concrete bricks missing at lower levels, and random incongruous material placed on the top.  The pavement was gone and the streets between the sidewalks were dirt with massive potholes.  As we got closer to Grigory’s place the neighborhood got poorer.  Piles of trash decomposed into the streets, and homeless dogs poked around for food scraps. Old factories speckled the landscape and were out of operation decaying like large compost piles.  Many of the factories were shelled out.  The Russians gave a tough blow upon departure, but were unable to take the best part of Georgia: its rich culture and kind people.  Nothing in the neighborhood had been added since the big bruises were inflicted.  In a few days time everything would appear normal, but I was too fresh out of Austria not to notice.

We finally got near Grigory’s place.  An assortment of different colored fences constructed together looked like a fortress wall.  In front of the long fence-line were two sets of railroad tracks overgrown with tall weeds.  The tracks stemmed from the factory nearby that was out of operation.  Grigory led me through a white door into a nice courtyard; white pigeons ran around.  The homestead was clean and felt cozy.  Grigory’s parents had strong scented coffee waiting for us in the kitchen.  We sat down in one of the small structures adjacent to the courtyard where dinner was served.  I gave the family some chocolate—which I bought on the way—and Grigori and I sat and talked.

After diner Grigory brought me to the best room on the property.  It had a nice wide bed with a flower printed quilt cover.  Above the bed hung stuffed animals in plastic bags.  My senses had been buzzing on overdrive all day and I was thoroughly exhausted.  I put my head down on the clean-ironed sheets and shut my eyes in a small Armenian home in the outskirts of Tbilisi.

Grigory and I woke up to a prepared Armenian breakfast of fried potatoes and vegetables.  After breakfast we retraced our steps from the previous night and reached his church.  I was antsy to do some exploring, but Griogory had to charge his phone, which meant we had to wait two hours.  He took me to Abanotubani—home of famous mineral baths located near the center of the city.  We heated up in the steam baths, and an older man gave me a massage.  He started with an aggressive smack to my back—perhaps to show his manhood—and then proceeded to rub it intensely for 30 minutes.

The pace-of-life moved much slower in Georgia than I was accustomed to. Achieving just a few objectives a day was a struggle.  But with slowness came additional time to make detailed observations.  Countering my lifestyle back home—the days weren’t chased, but observed.  It took time to get into the groove of not working timely from task to task.  Even though I had previews of this lifestyle in Eastern Europe, Georgia was running on a different clock altogether.

After a few days Georgia began to feel normal.  Our routine revolved around food and the church.  Grigory wouldn’t let me pay for a thing.  He made sure he paid for every meal out and every transportation ticket.  When I kept pushing him telling him I wanted to pay; he shut me off.

“Peter, don’t worry, it is church’s money.”

I felt guilty knowing that church offerings from impoverished older people were paying for my daily dosage of wine and decadent cuisine.  Usually, we would eat lavishly and then go to church for the daily prayer.  Indirectly I started to pay for everything.  Without Grigori seeing what I was doing I made sure I stuffed the offerings box to repay the church for my calories and alcohol consumption, and to help put some paint on the peeling walls.

Just a short walk from Grigory’s church was a grand church under construction.  Mercedes flew by next to cars held together with duck tape.  There was money in Georgia, but only for a select few.  On one occasion I decided to throw away my old worn-out shoes onto a huge junk pile on the side of the street. I walked away, but out of the corner of my eye I saw an old man with straggly grey hair pick the shoes out of the rubbish.  He gave them a sturdy look, pinched his eyebrows, and gazed at them with analytical eyes, and turned them in different directions.  He observed a fair amount of life left in the soles; he smiled like he scored a big find, and walked off with them.

Grigory’s obsession was video games.  Everyday we met Alex, George, and a few other of his friends in a business crammed with televisions and play stations.  They zoned out on a soccer game for hours.  Yells and hollers echoed off the walls of the small room, while neighborhood kids rooted them on.  Grigory was quite good at the game, and received respect.  While everything in Georgia was shared or given to me, this was the one exception.  I touched the controller for all but a minute before Grigory couldn’t take it any longer.  His fingers twitched like an alcoholic who just had his handle of whiskey ripped away. He would say something like,

“Pete, give me control; you need practice.”

Or

“This finals round; perhaps you play later.”

Play station was a drag for me, but it was interesting to see so much passion spilled over a few outdated games.  Grigory and his friends were well educated: versed in music, languages, and could talk for days about the French Revolution.  But the mindless act of video games somehow satisfied them the most.

Next: A rock almost smashing my head followed by a mugging attempt and an intense chase.

Grigori and I divulged into the delights of Tbilisi and into a good Georgian meal complements of the church.  I took a big bit of the katchapuri, sipped at some soup, and cleared my plate with satisfaction.  We met up with Alex who took me to meet some of his friends.  We walked to small market with a hair studio in the back.  His friend Alla owned it.  She smiled at me and introduced herself in English.  Her husband Misha was also there with a magnified glass stuck in his eye; he was working on a watch.  He lifted his head up and smiled at me while keeping the small glass squeezed in his eye socket.  I sat down in the barber’s chair.  Misha cracked me a beer and we all clinked our bottles together.  Alla buzzed my hair.

After my haircut I showed Alex, Misha, and Alla the difference between crossing the road in Switzerland and Georgia.  They couldn’t stop laughing as I mimed the process of waiting for a pedestrian light to turn green in Switzerland, and the chaotic movement of crossing the street in Georgia.

“Ha ha ha,” said Misha calming down.  “Peter, why you come Georgia not St. Petersburg or European cities?”

“Europe is full of beautiful cities but it is also full of tourists.  I wanted to catch a place in its original state.  Plus I think it is much more exciting here.”

“Oh…” he said.

“This place is real, and that’s what I love a about it.”

“Oh thank you Peter, we glad you here.”

Misha and I found a common interest in cycling.  He showed me his bike and shoes, and told me he would be riding the following day.

“Peter your ride with us?” he said with a smile.

“I’d love to, but I don’t have a bike here.”

“No problem Peter, I arrange bike for tomorrow.”

Eating back-to-back 3000-calorie meals and inhaling Grigory’s secondhand cigarette smoke was starting to wear on me.  My unhealthy Georgian lifestyle made me crave exercise.  Plus, it was cycling as a child that gave me the discipline and confidence to go to Georgia in the first place.

Grigory and I went back to his home.   The sun set slowly over the horizon and I felt satisfied with my place in Georgia.  I had made friends, and had developed life-marking experiences.  But I couldn’t help notice how extreme Tbilisi was.  It was a place of stark contrasts: rubble next to new restaurants, dangerous people inches from extremely generous ones, and despair pushed up against happiness.

Me, Grigori, Misha, and Paulu before our bike ride

The following morning I met Misha back at the salon.   An older man named Paulu was also there.  Paulu was a good-looking seventy-eight year old with an amazing mane.  His flowing gray hair swept thickly over his head.  He had a wide smile and a storied face.  Paulu had been married four times and was single again. During Soviet times he was a bike racer, and  coach.  He wore a blue jersey with black cycling shorts that fitted tightly over his fit body.

“Let’s do this!” he said as he slapped me on the back.

Misha’s cigarette dangled out of his mouth like it was going to fall out.   His elongated nose shot out over his two-day scruff.   His wide mischievous grin beckoned my smile.

“Peter are you ready for 80K ride?”  He handed me an old red Panasonic bicycle.

“Yes Misha,” I said with excitement as I put my leg over the top tube.

Paulu got on his bike and led the way.  He rode hard from the gun, and I was quite impressed by his speed.  Paulu enjoyed the role as leader and made sure we

stayed close to him.  He wanted to coach me and teach me how not to rock my bike when I pedaled out of the saddle.

“No, do like this,” he said while demonstrating to me.

Paulu & Misha

My health felt great for the first time in Georgia.   My body was consistently doing something active other than digesting massive meals and alcohol.  Heavy traffic made getting out of the city hectic.  Paulu protected me like I was his young protégé.  He rode to my left and buffered me from hairball drivers.

If the Tbilisi airport was my introduction to Georgian corruption, the bike ride was the conformation of it.  We rode swiftly along the right side of a long line of cars.  The police had set up a random checkpoint on the side of the road.  As we approached the checkpoint, Paulo slowed down and waved to the officers.  They waved back nodding their heads.  I looked to my left and noticed that each car was paying money to the police.  This scene had all of the signs of a tollbooth: a line of cars, and a person in uniform taking money.  But instead of a fixed structure with accountability, two policemen set up a

Soviet era bus stop

random barricade for the day to pull in some personal revenue.

“Peter,” Misha said.  “Police take money from cars but not take from BMW or Mercedes.  People with BMW or Mercedes have power, police scared of them.”

The whole process looked standard, and the cars waited in line patiently.  The difference between paying corrupt policemen, or tollbooths that funded a corrupt government, didn’t seem that much different.

We rode out past the end of the apartment buildings and old factories.  Lush Georgian countryside opened up, cars thinned out, and the sun beat down warmly on our necks.  We rode past houses with heavily fortified gates.  The sounds of chickens clucking and dogs barking filled the air; a warm wind blew gently across my face.  The cadence of spinning my legs felt sensational.

Jvari Monastery

Paulu and Misha warned me about a particular neighborhood dog.  They said he was viscous, and that we had to ride as fast as possible to get past it without getting bit.

“Bit?” I said with apprehension.

“Pete, dog mean, big teeth, bite, go fast”, Misha said with conviction.  My eyes fastidiously scanned the side of the road looking for dogs.  As we got closer to the house of the dreaded dog, Paulu warned me.

“Peter, do like me.  And when I go, ride very, very fast!”

I heard a loud bark.  A large German shepherd appeared on the shoulder of the road; his gaze fixated on us.

“Peter go!” Paulu said with gusto.  “Go, go, go!”

I got out of the saddle and sprinted as hard as I could.  Misha followed closely behind me.  A car drove by in the opposite lane.  When it passed we dashed quickly to the left side of the road, and came up on the dog with a lot of speed. The dog started charging at us.  Its mouth foamed and its teeth snapped with the intention of biting them into our calves. Paulu stayed behind us and sprinted straight for the dog while yelling at the top of his lungs.  I put my head down, and dug deep again.  My bike swayed back and forth, and the only noise I could hear—other than the dog—was my gears shifting, and my tires on the road.  I shifted up searching for more speed; my legs burned with lactic acid.  The dog was almost at my calf when its attention diverted to Paulu who was about 200 feet back.  Paulu charged straight for the dog.   The dog jump up at him but Paulu dodged the attack.  Paulu slowed down and began to duel the dog.  He grabbed his long frame pump, and when the dog jumped up at him again, he smacked it brutally hard on the upper part of the nose between its eyes.  I heard a hollow crack.  The German Sheppard let out a screeching whine and stopped barking.   It whimpered its way back towards the side of the road in defeat.  I stop pedaling and smiled at Micha.  He was breathing heavily while hunched over his bike.

“That close Peter, Paulu beat dog every time.”

We continued on through the blooming Georgian countryside.  It was midday and the sun filled the air with steadying warmth.  “Psssss,” Misha pulled over

Flat tires and smokes

immediately to the side of the road to see what was wrong with his wheel.  His tire had a leak.  He lit up a cigarette, smiled, and started fixing it with a spare.

“Bang!”  Paulu’s tire also blew.

The worn out tire had been sown with a needle and thread many times before.

“Shit,” Paulu said.  “Seven dollars new tire.”

This was a fair amount of money in Georgia.  They both put their arms up in the air and started laughing.  They laughed off everything and appreciated what little they had materialistically.  Their bikes were worn out with tired gears.  Misha’s shoes were much too small for his feet and he had to make his own cycling gloves.  Both their wheel sets were banged up and wobbled along as they rode.  What would be considered junk at home was respected in Georgia.  Paulu was very proud of his vintage X-Soviet race bike.  It wasn’t worth much but it was worth everything to him.  He was very particular with the machines and told me not to lye the bikes down on the grass because something could get scratched.

Another toast

After the tires were patched we rode on for about another hour and stopped at a house.  It was Misha’s friends place and he was expecting our arrival.  A full spread of food laid out on a table in the courtyard.  Women cooked and set up the scene.  There were six guys around the table drinking.  I was starving and ready to sink my teeth into delicious Georgian food.   But before I could get past hello, I looked at my hands and found myself double fisting wine and vodka.  Cheers were given to our friendship, and I went bottoms up at the top of the day.  Of course every drink had to be toasted to our friendship, deceased family member, the future, family, and ironically, good health.  There was no tactical way to dodge a toast to friendship, or your mother’s health, so I pounded the vodka with gusto.

My stomach felt tricked; the wine and vodka began to fill up.  But I needed food to counter my buzz and give me energy for the ride home.  An older lady cooked fresh pouri (Georgian bread) in a vertical and

Baking pori (bread)

rounded stone oven.   Her heavily wrinkled face surrounded her modest smile.  Around the table on the patio Misha’s friends laughed and drank.  Women came out to the table with dishes in their hands like on a conveyer belt.  We all happily stuffed ourselves.

“Cheers to your family!” one of the guys shouted; another fiery shot of homeade vodka burned down my throat.

Cooling the feet

A small brownish stream ran through the back of the property.  After lunch Misha decided his crammed feet needed some relief, so he sat down on the footbridge and dangled his constrained toes into the water with his shoes on.  A few of the guys came over, and we all broke out into a loud laughter.  The environment was rooted and marked by friendships, delicious food, homemade wine and vodka, and genuine comradery. Georgia was the opposite from my times in Scandinavia where the weather and the people sometimes felt cold.  I was in my perfect spot, surrounded by excellent people, and doing what I’d always loved to do…ride bikes.

My butt was in terrible pain the second I sat down on the bike seat.  I hadn’t ridden a bike in many months and my normal shorts had chaffed me during the ride out from Tbilisi.   Vodka consumption mildly numbed the pain; the damage had been done.  Every pedal stroke shot pain to my rump.   I was drunk and stuffed.  My drunkenness eventually sobered up to a buzz as we endured the forty miles back to Tbilisi along the Georgian Military Highway. Road signs spanned over the road in Georgian, Russian, and English, with the names like Baku and Yerevan.

Georgian/Russian/English

When we approached the outskirts of Tbilisi two dogs saw us from ahead and locked down their radars on six edible calves, achilles tendons, and ankles. The threat was twice as ominous as our previous dog experience.  Palau launched another preemptive attack.  The old man had fire in his eyes, and shook his head violently back and forth while he screamed.  He got out of his saddle and sprinted head on for the dogs.  The charge was mutual, but as the dogs and Paulu got closer to each other, the K-9’s decided it wasn’t worth the fight with Paulu and backed off.

The police all have new cars, motorcycles, uniforms, and credibility.  I was told they now get paid well and can be trusted.  In 2003 the police made money on their own by collecting bribes, now they actually enforce the law and aren’t feared. 

Despite the war with Russia three years ago things feel very stable in the country.  And Georgia didn’t have the edge that it had back in 2003.  I can honestly recommend for anyone to travel to Georgia, and highly suggest that you do so if you ever have the opportunity. 

The Caucasus Mountains are surreal; we jeeped far into a remote location on the border with Chechnya, Russia. Wildflowers were everywhere uniformly two feet high.  The landscape was a lush green with jagged snow-capped peaks in the background.  Ancient watchtowers from 350 A.D. stand strategically overlooking valleys.  The mountain people live wholesomely off of the land, but despite their remoteness and simple lifestyle, everyone has cellphones with perfect coverage. 

The hospitality made the trip.  I did a lot of drinking…it’s part of the culture.  Up in the Caucasus I was given a massive horn (a large hollowed out sheep horn) that was filled with wine.  I slugged it in a few large gulps like the Georgians.  Sipping wine in Georgia is alien. 

The Black Sea city of Batumi was under construction with large hotels and resorts being build.  I haven’t seen that much construction in one place since I visited China.  People told me construction jobs were plentiful (when was the last time you heard that?). 

Below is the continuation of my story from 2003; again Georgia is a much different place now.  At the end of the blog are some pictures from my trip this summer.  I am now starting the editing process and plan to have something cut in the next couple of months.  Enjoy!

Georgia 2003

Last Post: Staying with a local in Tbilisi

Radio/TV tower

The communications tower that stood high on the bluff over the city was a leftover from Soviet times.  It was a rusty-red color with a large circular lookout perch near the top, and probably built a couple hundred feet taller than it needed to be to be for the effect of looking ominous.  Similar towers loomed high over other X-Soviet cities and presented an ominous big brother effect.

Grigory told me that area around the transmission tower in Tbilisi used to be quite an event. He said there was a funicular (a tram-car on a steep track) that brought people up the hillside where there were restaurants, bars, and a beautiful park overlooking the city.

I wanted to explore the area, so I proposed the idea one morning over the usual egg and vegetable breakfast.

“Grigory, let’s go check out the old radio tower today.”

“Peter, funicular broken; no way to top.”

“I saw stairs that go up alongside of the funicular tracks, we can just walk up them.”

“You want to walk up stairs?  You crazy?  I no athlete.”

“Common Grigory, it will be fun.  Plus, when is the last time you’ve done something like that?”

“Never.”

My question planted a seed in Grigory’s head.  From the few days I spent with him I realized that his world was small.  It revolved mostly around the church, video games with his friends, and diner at home.  I though he might be up for a different experience.

“Ok, we can go.”

“We go in fifteen minutes, after breakfast,” he said.

At this time in our friendship I knew that fifteen minutes meant two hours.  By early afternoon we took the subway to the north of downtown and surfaced near the base of the hillside.  We ascended up small streets and passed a well-kept building that was the Italian Embassy.  A few hundred feet up in elevation we came across a Russian Orthodox Church.   The small onion domes stood out from the surrounding architecture.  About fifteen minutes later we reached the base of the funicular.

“Funicular no worked for years.  No money to run it,” Grigory said disappointingly.

We started climbing up the stairs on the right of the funicular tracks that looked to be in good shape.  There were hundreds of them, and Grigory breathed heavily up each one.   He lit up a cigarette.

“Peter, this difficult.  I no fitness.”

He puffed on the cigarette for assistance, inhaling it like it was oxygen.

“Why you no breathing hard Peter?”

“Grigory, we have only gone up a few stairs.  Plus I don’t smoke; it doesn’t help your breathing.”

“Oh…” he said like this was new news.  He picked up his cigarette, examined it with his head tilted, put it close to his face, and looked at it from all angles.

We ascended up a few more stairs.  A humid haze lurked out on the horizon; the sun shone through it and reflected light off of the metal roofs of the city below.  The brown chocolate-colored Mtkvari River cut through the center of the city and contrasted from the bright greenery of deciduous trees.

I waited for Grigory who was a couple hundred stairs below me.  He was struggling again, and puffing on another cigarette.  Eventually he made it up to me.  I let him catch his breath as he put his hands on his knees and hunched over.  Once Grigory put himself back together I turned around to continue upwards. We were about half way up.

Out of the corner of my eye a blur flew past my periphery.  A whooshing sound loudly entered my left ear; I felt a swift breeze on my skin.

“Shit!” Grigory said.  I looked back and saw a large rock smack the concrete about a hundred stairs below us. Grigory grabbed my arm firmly and yanked me off the stairs and into the bushes.  My gut was flying.  High above us some young men at the top of the funicular quickly disappeared.  We waited in the bushes.  I felt my heart beating in my ears.  I sat in a squatted position carefully peering out from the undergrowth to the top of the funicular.  Grigory lit another cigarette and waited patiently.  I reflected briefly on how the rock that just missed me—by less than an inch—most likely would have shattered my skull.  Grigory’s cigarette eventually burnt out; he peered out from behind the bushes, and walked out slowly.

“Peter, it is okay, now.”

We got back on the stairs.  I looked up and scanned scrupulously for another airborne rock.

immobile funicular

As we got close to the top of the stairs my calves burned and Grigory breathed like a dying horse.  He lit another smoke for relief and inhaled the whole thing in no time while coughing profusely.  My lungs hurt just from being around him; my senses honed in on my respiratory system even though it was fine.  An old red funicular car stood parked in a concrete tube.  Narrow stairs climbed around the station and up to a grand balcony built on top of the funicular structure.  We rounded the corner of the building and three young men approached us.  They looked to be the same guys that threw the rock, and appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties.  Two of them were around my height, but with much smaller builds.  I wasn’t too worried about them.  But the third guy looked more dangerous.  He was shorter and stockier, and appeared to be more pissed off than the others.  His eyebrows connected thickly like sheep’s wool and cast a shadow over his savage acme that cracked his face.

The young men stared Grigory down and sneered at him.  They then gazed at me and sized me up; looking at me from my feet to my head.  I noticed they were confused about where I was from.  Their faces changed from hostile to puzzled.  The short stocky guy asked Grigory for a smoke in a demanding way; Grigory complied.   Tension mounted as they kept dashing their eyes between Grigory and me.  We stood placidly; face to face with them.  Grigory and I were bigger, but we were outnumbered.  There was a brief moment where they were deciding what action to take, and Grigory and I were waiting for their decision.  But they hesitated, and we walked past them; to our luck they didn’t follow.

Old Patio for music and dinning

Looking back at old Tbilisi

We reached the vacant building with grand arches and columns surrounded by a large patio.  The patio was running rampant with weeds; the bottom level of the building had been shelled out.  The expansive views of the city were magnificent.  Grigory told me that in Soviet times the area was beautiful and full of flowers and thriving cafes.  When the funicular rail car ran many people enjoyed the park: eating at cafes, and watching live music.

“This was the place to be on weekends,” Grigory said nostalgically.

Looks friendly but ominious...thugs and cops working together past the gazebo.

Behind the building were botanical gardens.  There were a few flowers with lots of overgrowth; empty benches and gazebos speckled the park.  Beautiful infrastructure was evidence of how pleasant the park once was.  But by 2003, it had certain ghostly eeriness to it; I decided to walk in further.

“My family and me came here before.  It was very beautiful with flowers.  Now just shit,” Grigory said as he looked off into the woods.

I started to walk into the park off to where he was looking.

“Peter stop!”

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“If you go farther, you cross line.”

“What line?”

“Safety line.  In park they rob you.  Robbers take money and split with police.  They work as one here.”

“Oh,” I said slowly.

“You must know where and where not go outside of city,” Grigory said instructively.  “Many bad people here.”

I stepped back towards the building.  There was one policeman walking around in the park that looked over at us.  He walked around slowly with his hands behind his back, and kept a tight frame on our movement.

“This part of park ok,” Grigory said as he waved his hand immediately in front of us.

A few older ladies walked by with handmade brooms.  They slowly swept pine needles and leaves out of the pathways.

We walked over cracked patios back towards the building.  Four large men appeared from around the structure.  They were dressed in suits and wore dark sunglasses.  Upon a closer look I saw a short Japanese businessman in the middle of the men.  Perhaps he was looking at investing in the place.

Grigory’s emotions started to unravel.  His face became serious and his eyes twinkled.

“Peter, Soviet days better.  In old days—safety, pavement good, people good, music good, we had money and time, and everything worked.”

Grigory snapped out of his melancholy as he peered over the edge.  His eyes widened as he looked back at me tensely.  This was the first time I saw him move quickly.

“Peter, guys wait to beat us!”

I felt a jolt of adrenaline pump through me.  I looked over the edge.  The three young men stood anxious for us at the top or the stairs.  They craned their necks in different directions and waited for our arrival.  The dodgier guy clenched his fists and gritted his teeth.  His flexed his jaw muscle stood out from a story up.

The flashback of events hit me.  The rock.  The stair-down/bizarre moment at the top of the stairs….

“Peter, they will beat us; or pull knife.  Come Peter! Hurry!”

I shot one picture at the beginning of this road. I have never run faster.

We ran the opposite direction on a road that led into the woods.  Large pine trees canopied the road and gave it shade.  The road was empty, and looked to be an access route for the communications tower.

Grigory breathed heavily and didn’t have time to stop for a smoke.  I ran fast.  We made some distance from the building, but when I looked back I could see the three men in pursuit.  They must have heard us when we looked down on them.  They made it to the road and were sprinting after us.  We had thirty seconds on them.

“Peter, keep running, don’t stop!” Grigory said as he fell behind me.

The road started to gradually wind; old curbs and rusting streetlights began to line the way.  Whitened light filtered through the canopy of tree branches.  I imagined the days before rust, weeds, and crumbling cement.  I empathized for Grigory; I was here as an observer, but he had to live in place where things were getting exponentially worse by the year.

I looked back again and they were gaining.  A weird combination of fear and excitement showered over me.  Grigory also looked back, but only fear was written on his face.  His breath was loud.  It sounded like he was trying to get all of the air in and out of his lungs through a narrow plugged straw.   He coughed up phlegm and spit it out with force.

We rounded another gradual bend in the road; an apartment building to the right emerged from the forest.  Civilization felt comforting.  The timing was right: my legs were starting to burn and Grigory looked like he had just gone through a full cycle in an industrial dryer.  I looked back again and estimated that we had twenty seconds.  The stocky guy fell back, and was in the same unhealthy condition as Grigory.

Our plight improved when I saw a bus exit from one of the apartment buildings.   We waved it down eagerly.  The bus driver saw us and came to a screeching halt.  It sounded like brake pads didn’t exist on the bus; metal screeched on metal.  The bus driver opened up the folding door and gazed forward with a cold and stoned look.   We ran up the stairs.   I looked down the aisle through the back window of the bus and saw the three figures quickly closing in.  The bus driver didn’t see them, first gear engaged, and momentum started working in our favor.  The three aggressors knew their mission was done; a plume of diesel smoke clouded them out as we crawled away.

Below are some pictures from this summer.  Again, much has changed in Georgia over the last eight years.  Both trips were amazing but completely different.  The twisted excitement that comes with instability was less this trip, but the ability to get around because of new pavement was much more efficient.  In both trips the people were awesome.

Tbilisi, Georgia at night (Click On Picture)

Parliment

Locals at a restaurant that showed us around

Kartlis Deda (Mother Georgia) Wine in one hand for guests, sword in the other hand for enemies

Lookout point

How did this get here? Stumbled upon this structure after a hike on the outskirts of Tbilisi.

Guys I met during the first day who took us into their home and showed us around.

Jvari Monastery (from the 6th century)

Near the radio/TV tower above Tbilisi. This is where I almost got mugged 8 years ago...now it's a nice place for families and entertainment. Perhaps the Japanese business man I saw here with his four body guards made an investment?

High up in the Caucasus

"Schumacher" our driver second from left and his friends

Above the village of Dartlo watching watchtowers

Backside of the village Upper Omalo

I traveled to Georgia eight years ago.  This series is from that trip.  Enjoy!

Spring 2003

I sat in a comfortable chair and bit into a Subway sandwich with extra turkey.  I pulled back an orange Fanta and let the carbonation dissolve the airy bread in my mouth.  I had time and I was enjoying it.  Intercom messages in German followed by English filled the terminal.  The ceiling was high and people from all over the world walked in front of me.  I looked up at the flight board at Vienna International Airport.

My time in the Western world was about to expire. The flight board listed dozens of cities that I recognized.  But one stood out.  The letters spelling out, “Tbilisi,” illuminated brightly in-between Istanbul and Kuala Lumpur.  I watched flights leave and arrive for some time; my sandwich had already digested.  When “boarding,” lit up next to Tbilisi, I got up and walked out of the clean terminal to a bus that drove us onto the tarmac.  Georgian Airlines flight 682 sat alone in a sea of pavement.  I walked up the stairs and boarded the aircraft.  What I was about to do would change me forever.

I was eager to leave Western Europe and go back to a world of adventure, a world full of randomness and spontaneity.  Since I had left Albania in the fall, I had missed the feelings I got in places like it.  My winter in Switzerland had been fun, but comfortable.  After six months in the Alps, I had come to feel as though the rigidity of Swiss life was going to snap me.

To my surprise Andre, the Russian guy I’d met on the boat between Stockholm and Helsinki, emailed me the day before my departure.  Andre: the guy responsible for the worst hangover of my life.

Pete,

How are you, girls all over me because I am at home

in Russia and time is fun and go fast untill have

money in my pocket and those girls knows exactly what to do with your’s money no mater if it’s dollars or rubles so I’am

stay on my legs my friend.

I never have been ther where you going know but thinking

big difference with georgia in a possitiv way. So you will

have good time down there.

Andree

Andree was on the only person I’d heard speak positively about Georgia.  My Swiss- German roommates in Verbier laughed at my interest in traveling to Georgia, as I made phone calls from Switzerland to buy plane tickets.

The flight was smooth and relaxing. The Black Sea reflected bright sunlight, which made my eyes squint almost shut, as I looked left out of the airplane window.  The Crimean peninsula in Ukraine shot out into the sea.  It was home of the Yalta agreement between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, and was summer vacationland for much of the former Soviet Union.  I had no idea that in a few months time, I would be lying on a beach below reflecting on the adventures in which I was about to land in.

White puffy clouds wrapped around the tops of the gigantic snow-capped Caucasus Mountains.  They shot up from the water to the sky without reservation.  As the Black Sea came to an end we started our decent. The clouds thickened.

Tbilisi looked much different than Vienna from the air.  At about 10,000 feet up, I noticed a river winding through the old city.  Groups of decrepit Stalinist-era apartment buildings stood on the outskirts.  Emotions of excitement, anxiety, and fear of the unknown coursed through my veins.  I had no idea what my life would be like in an hour.

I looked around the plane and everything seemed normal.  The hostess refilled my Sprite, a couple across the isle drank beer, and my peanut wrapper sat empty next to a generic glossy paged in-flight magazine.  But my situation was about to become completely abnormal.  The experience of exiting the bus in St. Petersburg had given me a little training for Georgia.  I felt like I had stretched a fair amount before I was about to run. But this was definitely the next degree of adventure, and the next level of testing myself.

I had nothing in Georgia.  No contacts, or an inkling of what it would be like.  I smiled inside with a feeling of luck to be on the flight, I was fortunate to be in this situation, and I knew the challenge would make me a better person.  As we made our final decent through lower layers of clouds, my mind fired with energy and excitement.  The security blanket of the airplane was about to be ripped off of me.

The plane landed smoothly to a runway that was rugged and dilapidated, and surrounded by old inoperable M1-8 Soviet choppers half decomposed into the earth.  I smiled from within and breathed deeply as we taxied around the runway.  The normality, cleanliness, and sterile atmosphere of Austria and Switzerland were something I was ready to let go of.  I wanted to see a country in its natural state, devoid of tourism, and the infrastructure that comes with it.  I wanted to see a place that was raw and unpolished.

The plane stopped in the runway—and as if on queue, black BMW’s and Mercedes quickly surrounded the aircraft.  The corrupt departed the plane: the mafia, businessmen and politicians moved swiftly into their German luxury automobiles.  I walked my way slowly off of the stairs and onto the cracked tarmac. The sky hung mute with clouds; the air humid.  Luxury sedans raced away.  Red light illuminated off the wet pavement from the retreating cars’ taillights.  Nothing was moving through Tbilisi International Airport.  I stood frozen for a second, like someone had pressed my pause button. The air–like me–was dead still.  I craned my neck slowly and looked around at the foreignness.

I picked up my baggage from the plane and walked towards the airport, which looked more like a glorified triple-wide trailer.  I entered through a worn door and was stopped by a rounded customs official.  By rounded, I mean that he was a collection of circles: a big circle for his torso, a smaller one for his head, and so on.  The official looked at my passport and then glanced at me with conviction.  He came closer and accosted me with horrendous cigarette breath.

“Twenty dollars,” he said.

“Twenty dollars for what?”

The man lowered his voice, pinched his eyebrows, and came a little closer to me.

“Twenty dollars to get in country…it is not much money.”

“But the visa fee is thirty-five dollars, what is twenty dollars for?”

“Twenty dollars,” he said sternly.

I complied and gave him twenty dollars.

“Thank you very much sir,” he said with a mischievous smile.  “Enjoy your time in

Georgia.”

This was my first exposure to blatant, out in the open corruption.  Next time, I thought, I wouldn’t be so easy.

I entered a country that was—as I was soon to find out—held together by a fraying thread.  I exited the airport and entered the buzz of taxi drivers.  About thirty of them surrounded me.  I tried to look like I knew what I was doing, like I had done this before, but my foreignness had sheen to it.  As out of place as I was, it was a relief to be a part of non-linear behavior.  I walked forward and pointed at one cabbie.  Before I could catch my breath, I was in the back of a decrepit Lada inhaling CO2 like a tree.

My first observation of the outskirts of Tbilisi was the infrastructure.  It was in horrific shape.  The roads were cracked and worn just like the suspension on the Lada.  Large bangs came through the floorboards, CO2 entered through my nose at different levels—depending on how hard the driver was pushing on the gas—and mixed with his second-hand cigarette smoke.  My lungs were getting hammered.   But a world of amazement lay just beyond my window.  Nine story concrete apartment blocks lined the roadway, clothes and blankets were hanging from small balconies.  Children kicked soccer balls in the alleyways; kiosks sold beer, chocolate, and soda.

Georgia made Russia look like the promised land.  When the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, the Russians pulled out, and took everything including the toilet paper.  And what they didn’t take, they destroyed.  This reality, combined with the fact that Georgia hadn’t had the means to invest much in their infrastructure, made a scene for a grim looking suburbia.  The concrete even managed to look tired.

As we got closer to Tbilisi, the streets became busier.  Cars drove like heavy metal songs gone bad.  They swerved past pedestrians in an unpredictable way.  Once we got to the old city, the magic started to unravel.  Looking over the Mtkvari River, I saw an array of architectural influences: Georgian churches stood out with their sturdy bases, silo looking mid sections, and metal domed tops.  Within the same frame, I saw a Russian Orthodox Church, a sinagogue, Armenian Orthodox churches, a mosque, and various other statues.  The most impressive one was Kartlis Deda (Mother Georgia); a gigantic metal statue perched high above the city on the hillside with a sward in one hand, and a wine bowl in the other.  She reflected the muted sunlight with her aluminum armor and stood stoically over looking Tbilisi.

The taxi driver asked for my hotel, so I told him McDonalds.  I knew there had to be a McDonalds in Tbilisi, and since I didn’t know of a hotel to stay at, it was the only answer I could come up with.  I thought there would definitely be someone who spoke English at McDonalds who could put me in the right direction.  Plus, I had to go to the most reliable bathroom on the planet.  He nodded, and continued to drive in an incongruous fashion swerving around everything with the gas pedal floored.  It didn’t take long to figure out I was on an extended tour of the city.  In a way I liked it.  Like the plane, the seat in the cab was my safe zone and my one bit of normality in a strange land.  Soon I would have to leave it and step into the wild.

After circumnavigation the city a couple of times the driver eventually dropped me off at McDonalds.  I enjoyed the tour; it gave me good bearings of Tbilisi.  The tour came at a price though, and our negotiated price of $10 soon turned out to be $50.  My driver would be one of many who’d try to rip me off.  But I was more prepared from my airport experience and settled on $20.   Georgia was a place I would have to fight for to keep my money alive.

I stood outside a beautiful structure.  My clothes smelled like an exhaust pipe.  The corner of the building was tall with shinny glass, and had a bronze colored metal dome on top.  Next to the dome was a large sign that said “McDonalds.” I felt a weird familiarity in an unfamiliar land.  It was like someone was going to shoot a movie and decided to erect a grandiose McDonalds.  Then at the end of the day they were going to take it down and let the concrete apartment buildings, cracked sidewalks, and worn out neoclassical architecture take over.  I walked inside to a neon glow and to the familiar smell of big macs and fries.  The scent of greasy food clashed with my exhaust smell and made me want to puke.  I walked up to the counter.

To my luck, some of the employees knew English.

“Hi, do you know of a hotel or guest house to stay in?” I said to the young man behind

the counter.  He was a skinny guy with darker skin; the bright yellow McDonald’s uniform he wore looked radioactive and banana flavored.

“Oh hi! Yes I know of a place not far from here, an older lady runs it and she is very

nice.  Her name is Mama Nasi.”

“Excellent!” I said.  “Can you tell me how to get there?”

“No problem, let me call to see if she is there first.”

The young man called and shook his head with a smile.

“Okay, all good.  Come with me outside, I will show you the way to go.”

He left his post and the long line behind me.  We walked outside and he pointed down a busy street.

“It should only be a five-minute walk.”

“Thank you so much,” I said.

“No problem, enjoy yourself in Georgia, and if you need anymore help come back and

find me here.”

I walked happily with my backpack towards Mama Nasi’s guesthouse, which was a large house in a lively part of the city.  Mama Nasi emerged from the front door with a wide smile that reflected back the sunlight from her gold teeth. She looked like a proud old lady as she leaned against the wooden railing next to her door.  She wore a stylish black dress and it appeared like she had just taken the curlers out of her hair. Her eyes squinted, and her arms folded as she looked at me.

Between her broken English and my broken Russian, we understood each other to the extent that I needed a room and she needed five dollars for it.  She escorted me into a large green house, through multiple dimly lit rooms with tall ceilings.  Mama Nasi brought me to a grand room with three beds in it.  She pointed to the bed that was mine.  I thanked her and she left the room.  I put my backpack down on the ground and collapsed onto the bed.  I was in a wealthy state of mind; and like other times during my journey, I had the feeling that I would rather be nowhere else, than where I was at that very moment.

I couldn’t rest for long, there was too much going on outside of the window, and so I decided to walk around Tbilisi.  I toured around the city in an enchanted daze.  Couples and friends walked the main drag at a relaxed pace.  Beautiful signs written in Georgian were completely unrecognizable.  Unfamiliar smells of Georgian food steamed out of restaurants.  The sidewalks crumbled under my feet.  I began to yawn to the point of exhaustion.  I couldn’t stay awake any longer and walked back to mama Nasi’s.  I expired quickly.  My day had been like a dream; my sleep was a continuation of it.

I won’t be returning from Georgia and Ukraine until the 20th of July.  Next Motley Planet post wont happen for a while since we will be capturing footage from high up in the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea coast, wine country, or the capital Tbilisi.  If anyone knows anyone at the travel channel let me know. 

Five Palestinian kids crowded around my table.  They were downright nasty, evil little children.  The one kid with my menu—who was around ten-years-old—slapped it down violently on my table while yelling at me.  His friends collectively joined in and yelled at me with irate faces.  They came close enough that I though they were going to try and get physical with me. Their movements were quick and aggressive. They had zero fear.  I hadn’t seen this caged up behavior in Syria or Jordan.

The five children had rage in their eyes and anger in their movements. Anger that I didn’t know was possible at such a young age.   I thought about what I would do if these kids got physical with me.  I knew I couldn’t let them attack me, but they were also too young to strike back against.  Also, what would I have to deal with if I did retaliate?  Fathers, brothers, police?  The tension rose; the kid with my menu edged right up to my face.  What was I was going to do if he came at me?  I hadn’t made a decision in my head yet, my reaction would reflect my adrenaline.  They crowded in closer and got louder.  I needed some sort of intervention.  The tension was at a breaking point and time was almost out before a confrontation.  A loud voice screamed out from across the restaurant.  A man ran over to my defense yelling at the kids.  Whatever he said, it struck fear in them.   The little punks dispersed and ran off through the front door.  I caught my breath and thanked the man.  I opened my menu back up, and continued on looking for my humus dish.

I walked back through the ancient streets of old Jerusalem.  I felt like walking around for a while but the vibe wasn’t the most accommodating.  The streets were mostly filled with Palestinian teens who behaved like they could snap at any time.  And after my experience in the restaurant, I decided to go back to the hospice.

The following morning I left the hospice early and walked through the almost deserted streets of Jerusalem.  It was interesting that the city was broken up into four religious quarters but Israelis patrolled the streets and had control over the city.  When I got out to the bus station, I was subjected to a serious search.  It reminded me of the “Frankford frisk,” in Germany where the security agents left nothing untouched.  Large men with metal detector wands searched anything that moved and then came in with heavy hands.

The Israelis and Palestinians both live in captivity.  No one is really free.  The Palestinians are occupied, and the Jews have to go through so many security apparatuses on a daily basis that I believe their consciousness is occupied.  The day before I left Jerusalem I unloaded my pockets five times before walking through different metal detectors.  I even got searched walking into Sbarro’s Pizza.

Security dogs sniffed out the bus as I boarded it.  I was heading south past the Dead Sea to the town of Eilat before crossing back into Jordan.  We sped out of the bus station through the outer suburbs of Jerusalem.  The morning was brisk and sunny.  One of the neighborhoods we passed through had only Hasidic Jews walking the streets.  They wore long black coats with black hats and had beards with long curls off of their sideburns.

We left the urban landscape and were quickly in the desert.  One voice on the bus stood out louder than any other.  A woman spoke in a strong New York accent with a whiny undertone that pierced through the bus like a needle through a cotton sweater.  She was half standing and talking on her mobile phone.

“Yeah, yeah, in New York is cold right now I know…Hey how’s Martha dooin?  Did she get

back from her honeymoon yet?   I still think that guy Kent is a sleeeeeaze bag.  What do you

mean you’re not going on vacation?  Yeah, yeah, I know, the pizza doesn’t taste like back

home.”

This annoying conversation went on for miles.  For relief I looked to the left out of my window and saw the expansive Dead Sea.  The geography looked similar to the Mojave Desert except a massive body of water was in the middle of it.   I was below sea level—like in Death Valley—at the lowest point of the earth, 1385 feet below the oceans natural rim.  An odd feeling comes with being below sea level, and I’m not sure if it’s because I knew the fact that I was below sea level, or because nature has a way of messing with your vertigo.

Occasionally a resort popped up on the shore to my left.  To my right, backed up against the mountains, we passed occasional Israeli settlements.  The settlements were surrounded by tall security fencing with one gate in the front to let cars and people out.  Lights and horns fixated on top of the fences.  They were oases of humanity etched into the inhospitable landscape of parched land.  The settlements looked more like elaborate prisons than places to call home.

We reached Eilat.  The lady from New York was still talking loudly on the phone.  My mind had managed to lower her audio track for the duration of the trip, perhaps like someone who lives under the flight path of a major airport.  I took a taxi for the short trip to the Jordanian border.

The Jordanian border was easy.  Both the guards out front of the border facility were smiling and relaxed.  One of the men stamped my passport and said, “Welcome to Jordan!”  I put my first foot inside Jordan and felt weight lift off from my shoulders.  As I looked back on Israel from the sidelines, it came to me how tense of a place it really was.  Everything was on lockdown, and everyone was prepared for another Palestinian uprising.  It felt like Israel was on a ticker and its time was limited.  Everyone knew that the pot will boil over again and they are ready to force the lid back on if it gets shifted off.   But I also felt like there was a collective insecurity that one day they won’t have the ability to do this.

My mission in Jordan was to see the lost city of Petra and then make it back to Damascus in two days.  I found a ride with some French tourists who had hired a car to take them to Petra.   The road out of the Dead Sea basin went up most of the way.  During the two-hour drive we reached a little bit of snow melting over a pass.

Petra is one of the world’s great lost cities.  It encompasses a large space of desert comprised of buildings carved into sheer red rock faces.  It is the number one tourist draw in Jordan and has been shot in many movies, including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.   I got there late in the afternoon and walked down the long narrow wadi that eventually opened up to a building about five stories high, carved into smooth rock.  I ran out into the desert following hiking trails to different buildings.  The sun was setting far over the Dead Sea, lighting up the rocks a deep red.

A couple days later I was on my way back to Syria.  I had met an Icelandic guy in Petra.  We both suffered through a savage hangover during our last night in Petra and were on the bus to Amman.  When we got to Amman we found out that no busses were leaving for Damascus so we decided to hire a cab.

The best Schumacher to date was at the wheel; he got us to Damascus in about two and a half hours.   He was touching the needle of his Audi up to about 112 mph and averaging around 105.  The other cars on the highway stood still as we raced by.

It felt good to be back in Damascus.  I took Karam up on his offer and gave him a call.  We set up a meeting point and time and meet up that night.  Karam took me out to his neighborhood, called Jermala, a busy suburb about twenty-five minutes from central Damascus.  He brought me to his house where I reunited with his family members who I’d met days before.  We walked around Jermala and went to a fast food chicken restaurant.  Karam told me that Jermala was full of Iraqi refugees.  He said that since the invasion rents had gone up exponentially.  No one had a definite number but there were over a million Iraqis in Syria. Jermala had and weird feel to it.  I felt like I stood out and I received many extended gazes.

Back at Karam’s house I got into a great conversation with his brother about religion and philosophy.  Karam’s older brother was a photographer and he told me that business was booming.  “Yes, Pete the Iraqis like to have their pictures taken and there are many of them here right now.”  He also told me that food prices had skyrocketed.   Karam and his brothers were well educated.  His twin brother had just gotten his degree in English Literature.  We huddled around a heater in a large room with pillows on the floor.  After talking for hours with Karam and his brothers they rolled out mats for us to sleep on.  I was comfortable on the firm mat, the heavy blankets kept me happily warm.

During my last few days in Syria I bought gifts for home and walked around the old city.   I had changed since I had landed weeks earlier.  My world had expanded dramatically.  I found a certain amount of innocence in Syria.  And while the outside world is available through Internet and television, there is still a refreshingly wholesome side to the place.  Karam asked me one day, “Do you have hot water in your houses in America?”  Karam was a clever guy.  He knew every member in Bush’s cabinet, and he could speak for hours about history, but he had no clue that most houses in the states had hot water for the last seventy years.

I felt no animosity in Syria whatsoever, despite the fact that most Syrians felt more effects from the Iraqi war than most Americans did (outside those who knew someone in the military.) People followed politics very closely, probably because the decisions made in Washington had a huge effect on their lives down to the very basics such as rent prices.  It was funny that everyone told me before I left that Syria would be such an anti-American place.  The greatest lesson I learned from Syria was that people don’t equal politics.  This can be proven in Great Britain where there is generalized negative view of Americans, while in the “axis of evil,” there is a generally positive one.

I ate a large feast with Karam’s family during my last night in Damascus.  My flight left that evening for Moscow.  Karam and his brothers insisted that they take me out to the airport.  His parents walked me to the car and hugged me goodbye.  We got in the car and sped off to the main road.  I looked in the rear view mirror; Karam’s parents waved at us until we were completely out of sight.

We got back on the main highway to the airport.  I rode down the same highway I came down weeks prior.  At that time I knew nothing about how the Middle East experience would be.  Weeks later I went to the airport with friendships and experiences that felt like they were years in the making.  Bashar Al Assad billboards passed at short intervals.  I was going to miss him not because I was a fan of his politics, but because the larger than life iconography of him everywhere.  Bashar played every role, from military tough guy, to sweet family man.  I felt like I knew Bashar at his best and at his worse.  I had seen thousands of images of his moustache; it never got old.  His identities always changed, but his moustache stayed the same.

Karam and his brothers brought me into the airport.  We sat down for tea and talked about our great times together.  I was going to miss these guys.  They humbled me with their generosity and realness.  .

My flight was called over the intercom and I got up to leave.  Karam smiled at me and put his arm around my shoulder.

“Peter, thank you for our times together, thank you for coming to Syria.”

I hugged Karam and his brothers.

“Thank you guys for bringing me into your home and lives,” I said.  “You showed me true hospitality and taught me so much about your country.  Best of luck with everything.”

I walked through security feeling mixed emotions.  I was ready to leave, but I didn’t want to let go of the Middle East.  I wanted to explore more of it and get a better understanding of this widely diverse part of the world.  I looked back.  Karam and his brothers were lined up in front of the glass separating us.  Their arms waved high up in the air; their smiles stretched ear to ear.  I looked back again as I walked through the metal detector. They were still there.  I walked on towards my terminal.  People and clutter stood in-between us.  Even as they became small, I saw their hands waving over everything obstructing my view.  They kept waving until I was out of sight.  I was going to miss this place.

Next post I write about the exciting country of Georgia!

Back in Damascus, the scenery felt familiar and normal.  I had a basic understanding of the city and felt comfortable navigating it.  I took a cab from the northern bus station to the southern one, where buses left for Amman and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula.

It was at the bus station where I met a man sitting on a bench with a few of his friends.  He was staring me down, so I said “Salam Aleikum” (hello)  to him as I walked by.  He smiled and said “Hi,” in English.  Mohammad Charlie looked like Robert De Niro, only he was missing a leg and had crutches.  His gray suit matched the cloudy weather, and his perfectly polished black shoe looked fresh out of a box.

(Check out video clip below.)

I looked to my left briefly as a bus pulling in caught my attention.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”  He jabbed me in the stomach in a playful Italian/New Yorker type way.

Mohammad Charlie smiled and grabbed me on the shoulder that was a long reach up for him.

“Come with me, let’s go get some lunch…c’mon I’ll take you out, you little fuck.”  He ripped into laughter.

Mohammad Charlie was a familiar character to me.  He reminded me of my cousin Donny from New Jersey who used to grab me on my cheeks, hit me in the back, and laugh loudly from his belly.  But Mohammad Charlie’s surroundings weren’t familiar to me, and the fact that he was a piece of northern New Jersey in Damascus had me spinning.

It started to rain hard, but that didn’t stop Mohammad Charlie from putting his crutches into high gear to cross the street.  We sped down the sidewalk towards an intersection.  Mohammad Charlie was a few paces ahead of me.

“What are you crippled?” he said as he looked back at me.  “You walk like an old lady!”

Mohammad Charlie veered left to cross the street.  He went into a busy intersection without hesitating.  Two cars slammed on their brakes a few feet from his crutches. Mohammad Charlie glared through one of the cars’ windshields.

“Get the fuck out of my way,” he yelled out at the cars like a mafia Don.

We ascended the stairs up to the restaurant.  Mohammad Charlie ordered a spread of   chicken, vegetables and hummus.

“You know Peter, Syrians keep their heads down.   There is no action here.”

He seemed excited to speak his near-perfect English to me.  “You know man, I just want to

visit New York…I just want to go there once in my life.”

I ate until I was stuffed, but not even half my plate was finished.  Mohammad Charlie kept piling on more food like a relative on Thanksgiving Day.  My bus was leaving soon, and I let Mohammad Charlie know.

“Hey man, I want to show you something first,” Mohammad Charlie said.  “Stand at the

bottom of the stairs.”

I stepped down the staircase.

“Okay, stop there you bastard!  Are you ready?”

“Ready for what Mohammad Charlie?”

“You’ll see.”

I looked up at Mohammad Charlie standing on top of the staircase with a determined and focused gaze.  The staircase was steep and narrow.  He had both crutches wedged tightly in his armpits; his hands gripped the spongy handles one finger at a time.

“Are you ready?” he said.  “3…2…1…”

Mohammad Charlie flexed his one knee and jumped off the top stair.  He landed a few stairs down, using his one leg as a shock absorber.  His butt almost hit the stair behind him but he pressed up quickly with his one strong leg.  He looked at me with pride.

“Oohhh, nice, Mohammad Charlie!” I said.

“Again?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Get up or downstairs?”

“Down.”

Mohammad Charlie leaped again but made it one step farther this time.  He looked at me with a serious, I just jumped the stairs with one leg look, and continued on past me.

“Did you get that?” he said.

Mohammad Charlie walked me back to the bus station.

“You take care,” he said with a smile.  “I wish we could spend more time together.  But I

understand you are off, you little fucker.  Anyways, what the fuck is in Amman?  There isn’t

shit going on down there.  Amman for New Years,” he said under his breath.  “Who the

fuck would do that?”

I laughed internally, Mohammad Charlie’s shit talk was rubbing onto me in a positive way.

We gave each a firm hug.  He grabbed my cheek.

“You take care guy, good luck with everything, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, which is

everything.  And come back to Syria, you hear me you fuck head!”

I got on the bus and waved goodbye to Mohammad Charlie.  He hobbled back to the place where I first met him.  His friends gathered around him.  Mohammad Charlie was the leader of his little group.  None of them looked like they were going anywhere.  The bus station was their hangout.

There were a few open seats near the back of the bus.  My ticket read 24b.  As I approached my seat, one young passenger stood out; he looked like the Arab version of Rickey Martin.  I sat down beside him and said, “Salam Aleikum.”

“Hi, nice to meet you,” he said in perfect English.  “My name is Karam, what’s yours?”

“Peter.  Nice to meet you.”

“Where are you going?”

“Amman.”

“Oh great, me too.”

Karam had an immaculate appearance.  He was wearing a fashionable sweater, designer jeans, and stylish black shoes.  He had just graduated college and was working on getting his accounting certification.  Karam’s mellow demeanor and kind mannerisms contrasted starkly from Mohammad Charlie.  Both personalities were equally enjoyable.  Karam was on his way to Amman to meet up with his sister for a family reunion.  The rest of his family had left Damascus two days earlier.

Karam’s sister lived in the disputed Golan Heights region that has been controlled by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967.  This hotly contested land borders the Sea of Galilee and holds a large amount of fresh water in a dry part of the world.  Water is highly sought after in the Middle East because of its scarcity, and this is the big sticking point between Syria and Israel.  Years earlier, Karam’s sister had married a Syrian man from Golan and moved there.  The husband had lived in Golan since before 1967.  Therefore, even though he was Syrian, he was allowed to stay in Golan.  But it is impossible for Syrians to have an option to live in Golan and visit Syria.  And it is impossible for any Syrian to move to Golan.  They have to marry in with someone who has lived there since 1967.  By picking Golan, Karam’s sister was not allowed back into Syria; therefore she could not go to her home and see her family.  Karam told me that the Israeli government wouldn’t allow her to come back to Syria.  The only exception for a Syrian in Golan to return to Syria is if they are going to University.

Every year the family had to meet up in the one neutral place that would accommodate them all, Amman, Jordan.  I didn’t understand why the Israelis wouldn’t want Syrians to go back home.  The other way around made so much more sense.  The Syrian government wanted as many Syrians as possible living in Golan.  This would add to their claim that it was theirs and Israel was occupying them.  I wondered if it was Syria who wouldn’t allow her back in, fearing that she might stay along with others choosing the same path.  If Golan was devoid of Syrians and exclusively occupied by Israelis, Syria would be more distant from the hope of getting it back.  Whatever was going between the Israeli and Syrian governments, Karam’s situation highlighted family hardship at the expense of politics.

“Peter, I am trying to study accounting in the United States, I will have my interview at the US Embassy in two weeks.”

Karam told me that he had gone twice before for the interview but was rejected.

“They charged me $100 for each interview, my family had to save for months, and then they

rejected me without a reason.  But this time I think I will get the visa.”

Karam’s story sped up the trip.   The Jordanian border arrived quickly.  Going through Syrian and Jordanian customs was painless.  Massive billboards of smiling King Abdullah II, and his diseased father King Hussein, lay just inside the Jordanian border.  Their portraits looked more like they were trying to sell puppy food than run a country and contrasted from the ones in Syria of Bashar Al Assad who looked like he was a professional thug out on a mission to kick ass.

It wasn’t long before we reached Amman.  The city was modern and westernized compared to Damascus.  The highway system had large overpasses and byways.  Pizza Huts, KFC’s and Holiday Inns dotted the landscape.

Karam invited me to meet his family.  They rented out an apartment for the occasion.  We walked for ten minutes from the bus station and reached a quiet suburb.  Inside the apartment, Karam’s sister along with her children, mother, father, brother, twin brother, and a few other relatives were getting ready for a feast.  The women were busy at work setting up the table and cooking, while the men chatted while watching the children chase each other.  The room was bright and warm with high ceilings.  The air was thick, filled with the aroma of a feast in the making.  The aroma of cumin mixed with the smell of baked chicken.   Karam’s sister ran up to him and hugged him with all of her might.  They both had tears in their eyes.

After a large meal and waves of hospitality, I felt it was a family moment and time for me to move on for the night.  Politics were keeping this large family apart for all but a few days out of the year, and I didn’t want to interfere too much.  Their situation was bittersweet.

Karam helped me find a guesthouse a few blocks away.  The room was frigid cold and didn’t seem to have any source of heat.  I changed into some nicer clothes and set out on a mission to find a New Years Eve beer.

After walking down the street for thirty minutes I came upon an illuminated awning that led the way down a flight of stairs into what looked to be a bar.  Seedy looking men waited under the awning.  I got in the queue; the line moved quickly.  When I got down to the bottom of the stairs there was a man in a suit and tie who greeted me and then walked me over towards the bar.   The bar was dark and dingy with a low ceiling and dim neon lights.  A thick cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the air and restricted me from seeing the other side of the room  Girls in short skirts and overdone make-up passed me with long promiscuous looks.  There were all types, Middle Eastern, Asian, Caucasian and Black.  I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer: cost fifteen dollars.  I pulled the Heineken up to my lips and slowly put together my surroundings…I was in a raunchy prostitute den.  The place looked dirty without light, and felt filthy with the characters around me.  The guy next to me was about 150 pounds overweight with the buttons of his shirt stressed to the max.  He made out with a young attractive Asian girl.  An older Middle Eastern girl slowed down as she walked by me, her fat roll brushed over my leg and left a staunch smell of cheap perfume.  I slammed my Heineken quickly and pulled the eject cord.

Outside of the club I met a few guys in their early twenties.  One spoke English quite well.  He was acting like a gangster rapper, which clashed with everything I had seen so far in the Middle East.  He told me about the three months that he lived in L.A.

“Careful in Amman man, we have a few gangstas’ here,” he said, slumping his shoulder and limping around with attitude.   It was a pitiful show.  A few minutes later some drunk teens exited from a car yelling like brash fools.  Damascus seemed more special by the minute.  I went back to my apartment, put on every piece of clothing I owned and froze into unconsciousness.

The next morning I met up with Karam and his family to thank them for their hospitality.  They offered me to stay with them when I got back to Damascus.  I didn’t want another night of frigid sleep so I transported myself to the center of Amman.  The hills became steeper and the buildings carved their way into them.  The architecture was old and charming without the presence of international chains.

I had planned on staying in Amman for a few days and then visiting the lost city of Petra to the south, with the goal of returning to Damascus in about a week.   I checked into a nice guesthouse and set out to tour the city.

I walked down a narrow street towards a busier road with the intention of walking all day.  I always enjoy getting to know an urban environment by walking without a map or itinerary.  By doing so, I feel it is the best way to get to know all of a city’s intricacies: the random Roman ruin, a conversation with a stranger….

Amman didn’t have the same effect on me as Damascus did.  Maybe I didn’t give it a fair chance.  But as I was walking around the sun-soaked streets it dawned on me just how close I was to Israel.  Then the feeling came like a wave; I had to go to Jerusalem.  I went back to my guesthouse and asked how far away Jerusalem was.  The lady told me that it was only forty-five miles.

Forty-five miles in certain parts of the world can be a great distance; this was the case of Amman to Jerusalem.  I took a cab to the King Hussein Bridge, which connects Jordan with the West Bank.  On the Jordanian side of the bridge I went through customs and waited a couple of hours before the next bus crossed the bridge.  Once over the bridge, I could see the Star of David flapping away in the wind high above the customs building.  The desert landscape became green, the closer we got to Israeli immigrations.  The lazy S-turns forced the bus to slow while weaving around walls of barbed wire.   The grass manicured, and the palm trees perfectly trimmed.  Israel felt special.

Young women patrolled around the customs building with guns slung over their shoulders.  The border guards contrasted from their Syrian counterparts: they weren’t smoking; they were young, female, and difficult.

I was hoping for a quick transfer so I would have time in Jerusalem for the day.  Instead, immigrations took me aside.  Syria and Israel do not have diplomatic relations and the customs agents didn’t like the fact that I was in Syria.  I had to worry about getting an Israeli stamp on my passport.  If I did,  I might not be let back into Syria.  The Syrian government bars anyone from entering Syria who has been in Israel.  I asked in my most diplomatic way, for the custom agents to stamp a piece of paper instead of my passport.   This didn’t make them happy, and I was told to sit in a separate room.  I was asked why I was in Syria and what was my business there.  I was asked what I had done in Syria in chronological order from landing at the airport until departure to Jordan.  Three different women asked me the same framework of questions in slightly different ways.  After a long wait, a woman stamped my piece of paper.  The whole process took three hours.

I thought my situation was bad until I talked to another American at customs trying to get into Israel.  Angie was a woman in her younger twenties who worked for an NGO in the West Bank.  She was born in the US and was a US citizen, but since she had an Arab last name, she had being waiting for ten hours that day on top of the three days before.  And Angie’s reality was easy, compared to the average Jordanian, who can purely forget the notion of going to Israel at all.

Outside of customs, I looked around for a way to Jerusalem.  I met a few other travelers looking for the same thing: two Italians named Bruno and Patricia and a Finn named Sami.  Eventually a bus came; we boarded.  The sun started to go down and the colors of the desert softened and reflected a light red.  We drove through isolated roads in the West Bank.  The pavement was new. As we got closer to Jerusalem, traffic increased.  The city was humming with action; I felt like I was somewhere important.  The old city was completely walled with Arab, Jewish, Christian and Armenian quarters.  We drove slowly past one of the gates in the old wall.  The bus driver pointed to it and said “Damascus Gate.”

We walked through Damascus Gate, down the streets that Jesus Christ walked 2000 years ago.  It felt like we were entering a castle.  Except the actors were different.  Like Elvis Impersonators in Memphis, there were Jesus impersonators in Jerusalem.  These character actors were on a mission to get closer to their savior by dressing the part and following his final walk through the city.  Men without the physique of Jesus struggled to carry cumbersome wooden crosses over their shoulders while navigating between the busy narrow pedestrian streets.  Religion had always seemed a bit bizarre to me, but in Jerusalem it just got freaky with Jesus impersonators taking themselves seriously.  The one cool thing about this behavior was the hand imprint in a stone.  This is where Jesus supposedly put his hand over two thousand years ago.  Since that time people have been putting their hand there and has resulted in a full-impeded handprint in the rock.

Patricia and Bruno said they had a few rooms reserved and invited me to join them.  Jerusalem has old city that is walled in.  Outside the wall is a new Israeli and Palestinian part of the city making up West and East Jerusalem.  The streets were crowded with people selling everything from cucumbers to plastic toys.  We were in an Arab part of the old city, but occasionally a Jew quickly walked by.

We got to the “Austrian Hospice,” a tidy establishment with shared rooms.  I wasn’t sure when the change was made from hospice to hostel but it still had a sterile hospital feel.  I checked into a perfectly organized room and set my belongings down.  We were to meet up with Sami who was visiting a Canadian friend who had been studying in the city for the past two years.  Patricia, Bruno and I got a cab outside the Damascus gate and sped towards West Jerusalem.  The city grew more modern and resembled a nice section of a Western European city.  We met Sami and his Canadian friend Chad at a sushi restaurant.  It felt familiar.  I asked Chad if he leaned more towards the Israelis or Palestinians in regards to the political situation.

“After almost two years in this city I haven’t found any clarity and it’s more confusing to me now that I know more.”

We went out for drinks at a busy Irish pub afterward.  The place was massive and had high ceilings with big-screen televisions on the walls.  Freestyle BMX played on a movie screen.   I ordered a tall beer with my new friends and quickly ran the day through my head.  Crossing between different worlds is always fascinating, and my morning felt weeks away.  It felt artificial drinking a beer above such hotly contested land at an Irish bar with the smells of heavily urethane wood in the air.

The following morning I woke up at the Austrian hospice and went downstairs for breakfast.  The breakfast area was highly organized with labels on everything obvious, from cereal containers to salt and sugar shakers.  The China was arranged perfectly, the handles of the coffee mugs pointing at five-o-clock.  Light filtered through thin white curtains.  The mood was stiff, and the few people eating did not look up from their plates when I walked in.  No words were spoken; the only noise was the sounds of clanking spoons on bowls and coffee cups on saucers.  This didn’t feel like the Middle East at all.

I had limited time in Jerusalem so I sought out a guide to show me the major sights like Temple Mount and the Western Wall (Wailing Wall).  He charged a lot of money and then gave me a guilt trip when I didn’t tip him.  After my tour, I went back to the Western Wall to get more of a look around.  Jews were lined up against the wall swaying back and forth from their hips up.  The wall rose high above the ground and had paper notes stuck in all of the reachable cracks.  I walked around observing.  Some American Jews danced in a circle to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah.  One of the men observed my curiosity and invited me to join in with a smile.   It became obvious that I wasn’t a Jew by my lack up understanding of what the hell was going on with my out of synch dance moves.  The man’s smile went away and I was ostracized.

The cab came and sped us off through the empty streets.  When we reached the train station,  Rodey carried my bag, and Akhmad walked beside me with his arm over my shoulder.

“Peter thank you for everything, we hope to see you soon,” Akhmad said.

“Good luck to you and your family, you are a good man,” Rodey said smiling.

I boarded the train and waved back to the guys, and instantly felt nostalgic for my time in Aleppo with the friends that I had made.  I knew I would not see them for a long time, if ever again.  The train started moving, and the doors closed; I was on my own again.

I put my head in my Syria book for most of the journey.  The landscape was dry with strips of land dedicated to agriculture.  As we got closer to the Mediterranean, we crested a small mountain range.   For a brief time we went through a dense pine forest and then descended out of the trees.  The value of timber had to be high in Syria since this was the first forest I had seen.  The countryside became greener, evidence of the humidity from the coast.  Olive groves appeared.

My goal was to get a hotel close to the Mediterranean.  I wanted to spend a few days near the water.  When I got off the train taxi drivers from all angles came at the platform.  Usually I go for public transportation, but when getting my bearings in a new place, sometimes I opt for a cab.  One cab driver sought me out,

“Cab ride to Latakia?”

Mohammad was his name but he quickly took to Schumacher.  Schumacher wore a shiny black faux-leather jacket that covered his husky body.  His black hair was placed perfectly making 90-degree angles at the upper corners.   If I could catch him in the right light his shadow cast a square on top of a brawny neck.

Schumacher drove me north of Latakia to the beach communities.  Thinking I was wealthy, he brought me to a five-star hotel that cost over $150 a night.  I told him I needed cheaper accommodations so he drove me north and then out to a peninsula.  It was a resort area that was mostly shut down for the winter.  Schumacher had friends, and I ended up staying in the basement of one of their rentals.  The Latakia area is a huge destination for Saudi families escaping the extreme heat of the Arabian Peninsula in the summer.  And also for those looking to cut loose.  Latakia is known for its liberal attitude; therefore bikinis are a normal sight during the warm months, and alcohol is readily available.

I checked into my room.  It was dark and dead.  It looked like it hadn’t seen humanity since the previous summer.  The few windows up high on the wall barely touched above ground level.  I was in a basement.  The faded red curtains filtered out the little light that was trying to get in.  I put my bag down on one of the fifteen beds that were in the apartment.  A plume of dust slowly rose into the air and was caught in a faint beam of light that came through the window.

The Mediterranean raged outside my door.  The winds ripped through me as I walked toward the stones and sand near the waters edge.  The water was a turquoise green that turned into a deep blue out at sea.  Up the coast to the north I saw a cone shaped mountain in Turkey.  The sun made an attempt at warming things. but the wind outperformed it at keeping everything cold.

I walked around the few streets of the town that night.  Everything was ghostly quiet.  Most of the lights inside the buildings were shut off.  Only a few streetlights illuminated part of the road.  Palm trees marked both sides of the street.  I walked into the only well-lit establishment that was a convenience store/restaurant in the basement of an apartment building.  There were a few white plastic tables and chairs crowded next to each other.   I met two Iraqis there.  The older of the two spoke English well and left Iraq twenty-days earlier.  He had been working with an American construction company.  He told me it was too dangerous to stay there, and that he had threats for his life.  They both looked lost and displaced.  They were in Syria “waiting it out” until things became better at home.  I was in a weird position: I was traveling to Syria because of a vacation, and they were there because of life threatening circumstances.  They were there only because of an American war.  I didn’t feel any hostility from them, but I felt a bit of guilt.

Back at my apartment I couldn’t get this thought out of my mind.  My dimly lit room with fourteen empty beds felt eerie.  I heard the Mediterranean at work with sounds of the wind and waves crashing against the rocks.  This little town was full of displaced Iraqis and I was the one American in town.  Obviously the guy and his friends who let me in the room knew this since they had my passport.  Questions entered my mind.  Would any of the Iraqis cross the line between people and politics and take their anger out on me?   I uneasily fell asleep to this thought in my cold and drafty room.

The next morning Schumacher knocked on my door.

“Pete, are you ready for a tour?” he said excitedly.

“Where too?”

“We have amazing Latakia and of course Crusaders castles to see.”

Schumacher took me into Latakia.  The city was bustling with action.  All the girls were devoid of headscarves.  Most of them dressed fashionably with skirts and designer boots.  The men were dressed nicely in slacks and leather shoes.  He showed me a few Roman ruins and we stopped for a pastry at an outdoor café.  We drove south of Latakia on a modern four-lanned highway.  Schumacher began to talk about politics.  He gave me the standard U.S. government is bad but the people are good routine.  He also said the same about the Israelis.

“No, I don’t hate Israeli people,” he said with passion.  “I hate government, army…if

someone takes your land what do you do?  Many Jewish people are good, I don’t hate the

Jewish.”

Our conversation moved onto 9/11.  Like most Syrians he though this was a conspiracy.

“Why haven’t Americans found Bin-Laden?  You send people to the moon but can’t find Bin-

Laden?  That’s crazy.”

We ascended up a mountianous road to the Saladin Castle.  The vegetation became thicker and small pine trees appeared.  Schumacher looked high up at a ridgeline and pointed.

“I think I see a cave up there…maybe Bin-Laden is in it?”  He tore into a deep laugh and I joined in.  As long as I laughed, he kept saying the same line.  Around the next corner, a cliff area appeared in the distance.

“Oh look over there…I think I see Bin-Laden, he’s putting out his fire so we don’t see

him.”  This led to us both laughing again.  I laughed at this joke two more times.

From atop the castle I could see out the Mediterranean.  I turned around 180 degrees to a backdrop of mountains with snow on top of the higher peaks and ridgelines.

I spent one more day out at the Mediterranean.  I decided to hire Schumacher to set me off on the next leg of my journey.  Schumacher and I took the long road trip with the afternoon destination of the Crusaders castle Krak Des Chevaliers.  We sped down the coastline on the smooth highway.  The infrasturctrure was much better than had I thought it would be.  Our conversation flowed well touching on everything from politics to life in Syria and America.

“You know the Saudis all come to Latakia to cut loose and have a good time.”

A two story high statue of Hafez Al Assad passed by with his hand waving towards the sky as we sped down the highway.

“Why is it that that America likes Saudi Arabia?”  Schumacher didn’t give me time to answer.

“They are the most repressive freaks in the Middle East.  You know that woman can’t drive

there and you can’t even drink.  And if most the supposed hijackers for 9/11 were Saudis,

why would the Americans stay friends?  If America’s goal is to promote democracy in the

Middle East, they send the wrong message to all Arabs by befriending Saudi Arabia.”

Schumacher pulled over to a mini mart off of the side of the highway.

“One second, I’ll be back,” he said.

A few moments later Schumacher came out with a beer and a smile.  He popped the beer outside of the car and passed it to me through the window.

“Is it okay for me to drink while you are driving?” I asked.

“Of course it is, what do you think?  It’s not Saudi Arabia,” he said and then worked into a loud robust laugh and sped off back onto the highway.

Schumacher look a left off of the main road and ascended up towards the castle Krak Des Chevaliers.  We went through a small village built into the hillside that had a dusting of snow on top of it.   Schumacher told me that throughout history whoever controlled the castle controlled a great part of the Levant and the trade coming out of the Mediterranean.  We slowed up in the village as goats and people outnumbered cars in the road.  A man walked by pushing a bloody hacked-up sheep in a wheelbarrow.

The Castle itself was well preserved and impressive.  We spent the afternoon there.  I didn’t know where I would be staying that evening but I knew I wanted to get closer to my next destination, Palmyra.   Palmyra, a lost city of Roman ruins deep in the Syrian Desert toward the Iraqi border.  I needed to get a ride inland to the city of Homs where I could then find a way to get out to Palmyra.  Schumacher agreed to take me to Homes for an extra $30.

I reached a guesthouse in the city but I felt charged to keep moving on.  I wanted to keep pushing through the night.  Palmyra was 100 miles away.  The owner of the guesthouse called in his brother who was willing to make the journey.

My driver was big and Gnome looking.  He had red hair and a mustache with a condom like hat perched high up on his head.  He was very pale in completion.  His eyes were wide and a deep blue.  His nose was like an awning and he looked like he came from a fantasy book.  His hands were huge but his shake was gentle.   We got in the small car and our shoulders touched each other like I was sitting next to a large man on a regional jet.

We drove out past the city lights of Homes to the naked darkness of the desert.  The road was busy with tractor-trailer trucks going each direction.  The diver said, “Iraq,” and pointed at the trucks.  My guess was these trucks were moving goods in and out of Iraq since there was no area of substantial population before the border.  There was a sense of excitement as we got closer to Iraq and farther away from Homes.  The constant stream of trucks clarified the fact that something big was happening not far away.

I woke up in Palmyra to a completely different landscape.  The air was dry and was already working away at cracking my lips.  The sun was strong and unfiltered.  I met an Italian couple that showed me around some of the ruins of the ancient city.  Palmyra was originally a wealthy trading post that eventually became part of the Roman Empire.  The geographic area of the city spans dozens of square miles and is loaded with Roman columns both standing and fallen.   There was a castle up high on a hillside looking over the city.  The Italians and I climbed it to get an expansive view of the ancient city as the sunset.

That evening I walked around the small city and stumbled upon a restaurant.  I met a young man named Mohammad who told me that his cousin was trying to fight the American military in Iraq but couldn’t get through the border.   Our conversation took place over a dish of pita bread and hummus at a small restaurant not far from the ruins.  A majestic golden hue radiated off of the ancient Roman stones of Palmyra while the sun set.  The weather was perfectly warm.   Mohammad had a stocky build and was dressed in Western fashion.  He wore a diesel t-shirt and designer jeans.  He was well spoken and quick-witted.  Mohammad appeared to be a product of Western culture, but he was also strongly rooted to his native land and reiterated to me the colorful history of Syria.  I felt no animosity.

That night I entered a small, well-lit barbershop crowded with eight men.  I opened up the door to a room of smiles.  There was a barber chair on the right with one barber behind it and a few seats against the back wall.   An older man of around sixty-five years old got up from his seat and urged me to sit there.  He was wearing perfectly clean, white traditional Islamic clothes.  He methodically passed prayer beads between his fingers.  I insisted that I could stand but he was persistent about me taking his seat.  The four other men chimed in and directed me to his seat.   I smiled and sat down.
The men smiled at me.  Our conversation was non-existent, but I wanted to be with them and I felt they wanted the same with me.  I was invited up to the barber’s chair.  It was like any barber’s chair that I knew from my childhood.  My haircut began and the onlookers watched closely.

It felt the same as being on a busy street in a major city.  While the curb and sidewalk might be a safe zone, you only need to step a foot onto the street to connect with danger.  This was what I felt like close to the Iraqi boarder.  My place out in the desert sands of Eastern Syria was calm, but it was impossible not to think of the danger a step away in Iraq.

Suddenly the environment became tense.  To the right, I noticed live footage had just come on the news.  Saddam was walking out on a platform with a few men around him in black masks.  He was handcuffed and holding a Koran.   A large rope was tied and noosed perfectly for his death.  Two large executioners escorted Saddam forward.  They put the rope around his neck.   No one in the barbershop looked happy about this.   I could see the faces of the men becoming more serious as the tone and cadence of the conversation pedaled into action.  They were Sunni.  They knew I was American.

“No good,” the man who was cutting my hair said, as he pointed at the television.

The lights flickered a bit, as if on cue, and I sipped my warm tea for comfort.  Everyone stood up and opened their mouths in awe.   Saddam was dropped and hung.

A commercial started playing.  Smiles, generosity and hospitality came back; the barber poured me a cup of tea.

After a few days in Palmyra I decided to go back to Damascus.  If I could get the right transportation link, I would make it to Amman, Jordan, by nightfall.  It was New Years Eve. Amman was where I wanted to kick off 2007.  The drive to Damascus through the desert felt like driving through the American Southwest.  The only noticeable difference were the signs on the side of the road pointing to Iraq, and randomly placed Bedouin yurts off to the side of the road.   I felt the urge for the bus to take a left at one of the intersections and go to Iraq.  I.  I wanted to see where all the Iraqis I had met had come from.  I wanted to be in the action.

Next episode I leave Syria for Jordan and Israel….

The outskirts of Damascus were mixed with old decrepit buildings butted up next to nice new ones.  Auto dealerships appeared with shiny cars and illuminated showrooms.  I saw a Land Rover dealership next to a broken down house in front of which goats wandered.  “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” blared out of the speakers of the bus. Eventually the infrastructure of the city died off, buildings became scarce, and the desert took over the horizon.

Hours later into the night, we stopped at a large and lit up bus stop.  I got off and bought a kebab.  I sat down by myself at a large red table and looked through the pictures of an Arabic magazine.

“Can I eat with you?” a girl said in a soft voice.

For I second my mind played a trick on me and was giving me what I wanted. Was it Najuwa? I thought to myself.  I looked over my shoulder, but saw Anisa with another girl.

“Are you having a nice journey?” Anisa asked with a smile.

“Yes,” I answered.

Anisa and her friend moved around the other side of the table and sat down with their red plastic trays.

“This is my friend Daria”

“Nice to meet you Daria,” I said.

Daria smiled, “nice to meet you,” she said in a very thick accent.

She continued to smile.

I tried talking to Daria for a bit but again Anisa blocked her out quickly by taking up more space on the bench and dominating the conversation.  Anisa was nice; I just wasn’t a fan of her domineering personality.  There was a pattern here, but I didn’t mind at this point. It was refreshing to speak with someone who spoke English well.  Anisa told me about how important Christmas was to her and her friends.  She talked briefly about the Iraq war and the amount of refugees that had come into the country.  And she finished up clarifying that Syria is an amazing place to visit.

Eventually I reached Aleppo and I checked into a guesthouse near the center of the city.  The hour was late, but Aleppo was lively.  My first observation was the amount of Christmas lights in windows and the ones that hung high over the intersections.  I walked the streets in search of food and noticed a nice-looking restaurant with a larger-than-life Santa out front.  I opened the door to the sound of Frank Sinatra’s “Angel Eyes.”  The name of the restaurant was Monroe (named after Marilyn Monroe) and the décor was of famous U.S. singers.  The clientele was hip and packed with young well-dressed professionals.  I sat down by myself at a table.  It felt like I was at a restaurant in New York City.

On my way back from Monroe’s I stopped at an Internet café.  The two guys who worked there were listening to Linkin Park loudly.  I checked my emails and then got up to pay.  The owner refused to take my money and said I wasn’t there for that long; therefore he wasn’t going to charge anything.  I knew that if I used the Internet at a café in most parts of the world I would have been paying for it.  As a tourist it is always a given that you end up paying more for things.  In this situation, where it was easier to get money out of me than a local, the owner chose not to.

Back at the guesthouse a few guys sat around in couches in the small lobby.  At my entrance a larger man with tired eyes and a pinched forehead spoke without hesitation.

“Are you American?” he said in excellent English.

“Yes,” I said.

“Sit down,” he replied quickly and pointed to the chair in front of him.

The situation felt slightly awkward as he sat up in his seat.  He looked over me slowly.

“Iraq is now the 51^st state,” he said.

The air was slightly tense.  I looked into the man’s eyes and kept quiet.

“We like Americans, but this situation is hell.”  He paused for a bit.  “I’m a doctor at home

but I can’t practice because I will be killed.”

He explained he was Sunni and that he had to get out of Iraq because of death threats.  His eyes looked empty and lost.  He was waiting for a quelling of the violence before he could go back home, but he didn’t know how long that would take.  In the background Al-Jeezera blared over the television showing the latest deaths from Iraq.  The coverage was gruesome, and the gore wasn’t censored like at home.  I saw a man who looked like grounded meat with a collapsed skull on the street.

“Six Americans died in Iraq today,” he said.

Again I was hunting for words.  Not coming up with much I said,

“That seems to be normal these days.”

He shook his head with a sad face.  I wanted to ask him questions about the situation in Iraq.  I wanted to hear his story.  I wanted to know his opinion.  But I could feel it.  He was fresh out of the violence, and my intuition told me to keep my mouth shut.  The man passed me some pistachio nuts and I took a couple.  His suffering was palpable.  I felt like it was time to leave.

“Goodnight,” I said.

The men said goodnight back to me with sad smiles.  I headed up the stairs to my room and passed out.

The next day started with a lot of fire running though my veins.  It was a sunny and crisp Christmas morning.  I had spent other Christmases abroad but this one felt even more special and exotic.  I didn’t know beforehand that Syria—a Muslim country—had such a strong foothold in Christianity.  And I didn’t think that Syria would offer a Christmas experience that somewhat resembled one I was familiar with as a child.  But it did.

I poked around through the ancient narrow streets of the city.  Christmas is a national holiday in Syria, and all of the storefronts were closed that morning.  I passed around a tight corner in an alleyway curious to see what was ahead in the center of the old city.  I vaguely heard Christmas carols.  I followed the sound through the dark alleyway.  The sun hadn’t reached the street level yet, but above me the sky was a deep blue.  Birds flew around overhead.  The singing grew louder and as I rounded another corner I came upon a large church.  The sun illuminated the front shiny surfaces of the building.  A stack of wrapped up Christmas presents were neatly piled to the left in front of the church.  I opened up the door to a wall of volume.  The choir, along with the organ and congregation, energized the room with noise just like at home.   I entered the church and sat down in one of the back pews. Everyone was well dressed and standing.  The priest looked similar to Pope John Paul the II.  Bibles were in hand; the whole congregation was participating except me.  I sat in the back and listened to “Joy To The World in Arabic.”

After the Christmas ceremony I kept exploring the ancient streets of the city.  Aleppo had come alive with people and traffic.  I entered a souk that stretched for a half mile.  It had everything from light switches to large bags of spices.  Merchants yelled out what they were selling under artificial light.  When I finally made my way to the other side I emerged out of the portal to a bright blue sky.  In front of me was the awesome Aleppo citadel.

The citadel had a massive area for a moat, but was devoid of water.  It was grand and dwarfed every other building in its vicinity.  A long slanted entrance climbed steeply up over the mote and to the open gate.  From this vantage point the city seemed far below.  I looked around and saw the rooftops of Aleppo.  Once inside and up on top I could see a 360-degree view of the city.  The sky clouded up, but the sun was piercing through and shooting down rays of light on different neighborhoods.  The energy magnified with loud noise.  Hundreds, if not thousands of mosques, chanted the midday prayer over loudspeakers.  The imams of each mosque called out, “Allah Akhbar” followed by a prayer.

I walked around the citadel checking out different ruins.  Families and couples strolled around in leisure.  Off in the distance, kids played around on the stones of the citadel.  The area took up about the size of a football field.  I approached the children and two young women noticed my presence.   As I got closer I could hear them speaking to the children in English.  Both women had headscarves on and were dressed in stylish coats.  I said hi to one of them.

“Hello,” she replied, with a large smile.  Welcome to Syria.”

“How are you and where are you from?” she continued.

“I’m good, I’m from the United States.”

The woman’s name was Nasreen.  She was a nineteen-year-old college student who had started an English language school with her younger sister.  They had twenty students in total.  Nasreen made it clear that her parents had money but that she wanted to pay for her college on her own.  She was able to do it through her small business.

“We love Americans,” she said.  “They never come here to visit though.  We see French and German but never American.”

Nasreen looked at me confidently.

“Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, all over the Arab world, its one people.”

I looked out to Aleppo and saw the city in every direction.  We were in the middle of it on a high vantage point but I still couldn’t see the end of an urban landscape.

“Thank you for coming to us!”

She told the little blond haired boy beside her to repeat after her.

“Thank you for coming to us, thank you for visiting our country,” the boy said.

I was invited by Nasreen to join in with the students back at the school.  We boarded a small school bus at the entrance of the citadel and drove off through the city.  I met one of her teachers, Akhmed.  He was a soft-spoken man in his young thirties.  He wore a tight denim jacket that was holding back his gut.   I sat in the back with a few kids around me bumping around and laughing, just as I had done when I was a child.  Arabic pop blared over the speakers.

We eventually reached the suburbs of Aleppo.  15-story high concrete apartment buildings speckled the landscape.   The clouds became thicker and the weather colder.  It was early evening and the sun was making its way over the horizon behind the clouds.   The bus stopped in front of a dark grey apartment block.  The kids all ran out yelling and screaming.  I followed them.  Inside the front door was a colorful environment contrasting from the grayness outside.  On the walls hung huge posters with English phrases and colorings.  I sat down on a chair that fit about half of me with my knees up near my chest.  The students all came around.

“How are you, what is your name?” they said one at a time.

“I am Mohammad, I am seven-years-old,” a little boy said in a high pitched voice and then ran off giggling towards the door.

My attention turned towards the door as it opened.  A good-looking guy with a shaved-head entered.  His smile beamed from ear to ear.

“Hello Peter, it is nice to meet you.”

His name was Rodey; Nasreen had called him to let him know I was there.

“Hello, nice to meet you,” I said.

Rodey was Nasreen’s boyfriend.  They had met only a month earlier but were planning on getting married.  Premarital sex was taboo, and with Rodey’s bugged out eyes and quick movements I was guessing this was his catalyst for the rush into marriage.  He flirted with Nasreen and made her laugh.

After some light conversation and laughs Rodey became more stern.

“Why is the American government so against Muslim nations?” he said, while looking at me seriously for the first time.

“My father was killed by Israelis when I was a child,” he continued.

“Rodey,” I said.  “I am not for the war right now.”

He perked up and smiled,

“You are a good man Peter, let’s drink some tea!”

This was the end of our political conversation.

That evening Akhmad showed me around Aleppo.  Akhmad insisted on buying me everything.

“Peter, do you need CD?”

“No, I’m good right now, but thanks Akhmad.”

“But Peter come in this shop for CD.”

“I’m really good on CD’s at the moment Akhmad, but thank you.”

“Peter I must get you this CD, please come with me.”

“Okay Akhmad,” I said realizing that Akhmad might actually be more stubborn than me.

He proceeded to buy me three CD’s.

Akhmad took me out to diner that night to a colorful restaurant with Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling.   It was my prerogative to pay for diner; I had to pay back Akhmad someway.

“Akhmad I am paying for diner.”

“No Peter, it is in Arabic culture to pay for the guest.”

“But Akhmad, you have bought me many things and have showed me the city, it is the least I

can do.”

“No, Peter.”

Akhmad walked up to our waiter who was at another table and asked for the bill.  He waited at the front counter until the waiter met him.  He paid the bill and came back towards me.

“Peter, I paid,” he said with a smile.  “Let’s go.”

The city was lively but I was dead.  I felt the need to go back to my place for sleep.

In the morning I met up with Nasreen, Rodey, Akhmad and the children back at the school.  I worked on English with some of the kids but they were more into playing.  Nasreen’s school wasn’t of the strictest order and the amount of spoken English was limited.

Rodey took me out that afternoon to help me get a train ticket.  I was planning to go next to Latekia, a city on the Mediterranean coast the following day.  The train station had a tall ceiling with beautiful chandeliers hanging from it.  The walls were covered with ornate murals.  There were murals of the president’s father, Hafez Al Assad, in different settings.  The murals mirrored the ones I had seen in the X-Soviet Union.  Most tried to carry the theme of, “the common good of society,” with patriotic messages.  This meant that there were farmers helping farmers in the fields, and engineers smiling alongside of other engineers.  There was a mural of a Syrian astronaut with a Syrian flag on his helmet alongside four Soviet cosmonauts.  A military mural with the Syrian flag waved high over soldiers and tanks.  There was also a timetable on the wall.  The irony is that the numerals we use in English are technically called Arabic numerals, but the numbers in the Arab world look completely different.  The only similar looking numbers are 0,1, and 9, but 0 means 5 and V means 7.  Rodey’s assistance was crucial for me getting the right ticket.

I started taking pictures.  This action called out attention in a train station where there were not many tourists.  But Rodey was with me, and I was feeling quite at ease in Aleppo.  I took a photo of the astronauts.  I took another shot of a mural with a new highway with massive power lines overhead.

A man walked by quickly and looked at me briefly. I heard him say, “Fuckin Americans.” Rodey heard it quite clearly.  His eyes flaired up with anger, and his forehead got red.  He chased down the guy showing off his athleticism and grabbed him on the shoulder.   The man suddenly looked panicked.  He was weak in the knees.  Rodey had the Vulcan death grip his shoulder.  Whatever Rodney said, it instilled fear in the man.

Rodey turned and came toward me; the man ran away while looking back with apprehension.

“Peter, I am very sorry for him.  People not like that in Syria.”

“Peter, he said fuck American government and not people.  Please understand this Peter.”

That evening Rodey invited me out with Akhmad and a few of their friends.  We went to a nice apartment in an affluent suburb of Aleppo.  Everything was clean and in order.  Books stood aligned perfectly on the bookshelf, and the magazines on the coffee table were symmetrically placed.  Sprite was delivered by one of the guy’s younger sisters.  The television was on in the background.   I asked Rodey what channel we were watching.

“Hamas T.V.,” he said.

I chimed in on Hamas T.V.  Two soldiers were firing rockets while yelling “Allah Akbar,” at Israeli targets.  No one in the room paid attention to it.  Rodey changed the channel to one of the dozen of Arabic music channels that all had beautiful girls in sexy clothes.  He kept clicking through.  Syrian cable mostly consisted of music video channels with an occasional news network like Hamas T.V. or Al Jezera.  I realized the party wasn’t going to fire off as I sipped my third cup of Sprite.  We went out to another elaborate diner where I wasn’t allowed to pay.  Afterward, we drank more sprite and smoked Hookah.

My train was leaving at 5:00 the next morning and it was already late.  We journeyed back to Akhmed’s apartment on the outskirts of the city near Nasreen’s English school.  Akhmed had moved my bag over to his place that day.  Akhmed’s apartment—twelve-stories up—was bare bones.  The paint was peeling off of the walls and it was ice cold.  The bathroom required footwear.  The whole place smelled of raw kerosene.   There wasn’t much furniture in the apartment.  In the main room there was a television up on a stand, and a kerosene heater in the middle of the floor.  A few blankets and pillows lay up against the wall.  I walked into the kitchen and observed a delicately balanced stack of dishes towering out of Akhmed’s sink.

“Peter, you will sleep here,” Akhmed said as he organized the pillows and blankets for me on the floor.  Rodey popped in a movie and Akhmed made an attempt at warming up the place.  He had trouble getting the heater going; he lit match after match with no success.  The ancient kerosene drip feed contraption acted up, but Akhmad laughed it off.  He looked embarrassed with a pinched smile.

“Sorry Peter, I don’t know why it won’t work.”

I felt bad for Akhmad and guilty at the same time.  He had spent money on me for shopping, dinner, and taxis without accepting a cent from me.  His heater didn’t function probably because he didn’t have the money to fix it.

I logged in a quick four-hours of sleep and woke up in the morning to the loud noise of the Morning Prayer and a mosque alarm clock that Akhmad had set up beside my head while I was asleep.  The mosque alarm clock also had an electric Morning Prayer alarm programmed into it.  “Allah Akbar!” blared from both the alarm clock and the local mosque simultaneously.  It felt like I was in-between the cymbals of a marching band.  I jumped up quickly.  Rodey and Akhmad were already up and calling a cab.  Out the window the streets looked dark and quiet.

To be continued…next episode I go to the Syrian coast on the Mediterranean Sea!

Jesus Christ came on stage not long ago in Damascene chronology.  Damascus is considered the oldest inhabited city in the world; it has harnessed civilization for the past 10,000 years. Therefore, it is impossible to ignore the depth of the city—history and experience is palpable; as you only have to look at the thousand-year old walls for proof.
Syria is under an “authoritative grip,” but as I walked it didn’t feel to be such a repressive place from a surface level.  The truth is Damascus is problably one of the safest big cities in the world.  Crime virtually does not exist here.  The streets are mostly devoid of drunks, junkies, freaks, and organized crime.

I walked my way through the busy streets to the old walled-in city of Damascus.   Inside was a labyrinth of alleys and passageways.  Muslims, Christians, and Jews are all represented here, their shrines erected high above the archaic shops and living quarters.

I decided to visit the Umayyad Mosque, the gem of Damascus and the supposed resting place of John the Baptist’s head.  In the Umayyad Mosque, it is required—like every other mosque—that you take off your shoes.  I was removing my shoes when I accidentally bumped into the man next to me.  He looked at me and said excuse me in English.  His name was Mohammad and I was soon to find out that every other person in Syria is named Mohammad.

Mohammad was a big guy with a hearty beer gut, an Iraqi who had lived in Australia for the past ten years and was back to the Middle East, alone, on a soul-searching vacation.  A Plumber by trade, Mohammad was 22 years old and had a hybrid Aussi/Arabic accent.  He showed me around the Mosque and explained the history of it to me.  Mohammad was content to explain the history of Islam and its days of grandeur but I could feel he had a bit of a hang up.

Mohammad was starkly anti-American in politics.  He believed in many conspiracies, from George Bush’s planning of 9/11, to the denial of the Holocaust.

“All the education in the U.S. comes from the Arab world,” he told me.

His arrogance was a bit thick and his information was off, but it was interesting to hear his perspective.

“Most college professors in America are from the Middle East,” he continued.

“I have no interest in going to the states mate.”

For all his negativity towards the U.S., he treated me with respect.  His rhetoric eventually dissolved as we ate dinner, laughed, drank beers and shopped.  Mohammad insisted on buying everything for me.

Mohammad brought me to an ancient hammam (bathhouse) where we got massages on large marble stones and relaxed in the steam room.  In the entryway, old men chatted and sipped tea in a methodical fashion.  Pictures of Bashar Al Assad, Hafez Al Assad and Nasrella were looking down at us.  The social cohesion was strong and I felt very welcome in the hamamm.  The men passed around tea and constantly said,

“Salam Aleikum” (peace be with you).

We said goodbye to the older men, Mohammad and I proceeded to the door.  Mohammad stopped and picked up a magazine lying out on the table.

“Do you know what this says in Arabic?”

I looked at the magazine with a large US flag on the front cover with the Star of David pasted into each of the fifty stars.

“It says, America’s war with Lebanon,” he continued with a shake of his head.

Mohammad was referring to the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah the previous summer.
Mohammad wasn’t a true practicing Muslim; he didn’t pray five times a day.  He lived in the consumerist Western culture of Australia, but his roots were also in the Arab world.  It seemed he was unable to let go of the past, but also unable to understand his present.  Mohammad was stuck in-between two worlds with a foot lightly placed in Australia and one in the Middle East, unable to put much weight down in either one.

It’s obvious that Syria’s politics do not align with the United States, yet I found the people to be overwhelmingly hospitable towards me.  It was humbling to learn how well they knew the difference between politics and peoples.   It seemed that everyone in the country knew the English phrase,

“Welcome to Syria, you are welcome here”.

I puttered around Damascus for a few days.  The weather was sunny and warm, and I was in no rush to leave.  Intricate neighborhoods wound steeply up the hillside and rammed against Mt. Qassioun to the west.  When the slope got too steep to build, the desert took over with sand, rock, and scrubby bushes.  Another steep 800 feet in elevation led to the top of the mountain.  I spent days exploring these neighborhoods and would sometimes sit in a small park, or stand on street corners for hours, observing Syrian life.  I caught the attention of only a few people.  Everyone was nice and helpful but not shocked by my foreignness.  This wasn’t like Vietnam where people were awed by my foreignness in their hometown.   I stopped frequently at bakeries selling tasty miniature cakes and rich, creamy chocolates.  I would order hot tea and enjoy the simplicity of my moment.  I didn’t have to be anywhere.

The pace was relaxed in the hillside neighborhoods; most people socialized as they walked with others.  Huge political posters were placed high up on buildings.  Many of the cars had full- size murals of Bashar painted on their back windows.  He looked like a badass in his dark sunglasses.

Every day I walked into a different restaurant for lunch.  I sought out places that were busy and popular with the locals.  The food was consistently fresh and delicious.  I loved the hummus; it was whipped to perfection, like a mousse.  Service in the restaurants was superb, and the waiters had a lot of spunk in their delivery.  They walked around efficiently and quickly like ants.

One afternoon I decided to take a taxi up to the top of Mt. Quassioun, a road approached it from the backside and ended at a few lookout points at the summit.  The view was spectacular.   Buildings stretched off into the horizon until the haze took over far in the distance.   The taxi driver told me that this was a popular place for youths to come and loose their virginity, away from parents and imams.

I noticed an interesting phenomenon during my walks around the city: World powers were using soft power to harness the Syrian youth.  And even though Syria was a significant Cold War player, its position still seemed important between the United States and Russia.  Not far from my guesthouse was a Russian cultural center.  It was a striking building, well-kept and clean.  It had cheap Internet access, a café, lounge, and library, but was devoid of Russians.  Young Syrians sat drinking coffee in comfort under colossal pictures of Russian icons, like the Kremlin.  A couple of days later I walked by an American cultural center.  It was closed, but posted on the door, I saw a sign advertising American movie nights and English-speaking events.

The old city was a gem.  Surrounded by an ancient wall it had a Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Armenian quarter.  Inside was an intricate maze of narrow streets and alleyways.  Christmas decorations were everywhere, especially near the Christian quarter.  I saw a Santa taking pictures with children under lights of reindeer stretching across the street.  Big illuminated noel lights spanned the front window of a shop.  The smell of smoked kebabs and grilled vegetables filled the air.

I went out one night craving an ice-cold beer.  I found a small bar/nightclub in a well-lit alley.  The alleys were off the main street but they were without the elements that I was used to in alleyways.  There were no bums, smell of urine, or trash.  Instead, they were well lit with people dressed up walking around clean cobblestones.

Inside the bar/club was a well-dressed sophisticated looking bunch sipping on martinis.  The décor was stylish and expensive looking with couches integrated into the wall.   I went to the bar and asked for a local beer that cost about two dollars.  To my left was a guy sitting by himself:  Mike a student and part time DJ, who was happy to talk.  In his early twenties, he was a slender and good-looking guy.  We immediately got into a conversation about politics. He told me that an American style of government would not work in the Middle East. His words were persistent with conviction and focus.  He wasn’t trying to intimidate me but it was obvious that his life had been weathered by Lebanonese politics.  He told me that he attended school in Syria where the environment was peaceful and stable.

“Lebanon is a place for everybody’s politics,” he said.  “And we Lebanese are sick of it.

Arab peoples need a tough leader.  Why do you think this country is so safe?  If Basher al

Assad left office, Syria would fall into religious turmoil like Iraq.  Christians have a good life

here and they are free to do what they want.  This would not be the case if Bashar Al Assad

was not in power.”

Mike said that when the Iraq war started, most conversations in cabs would end up in frustration.

“Fuck the USA,” the cabbies would say to him.

Mike gave me a nod, went for another beer, and then made it onto the steamy dance floor, pumping to techno.  Couples danced and jived to the beats.  The sun would be up soon and if I were in San Francisco or New York, last call would have happened hours ago.   But I was in Damascus, so I ordered another beer in celebration.

After a few days in the city I decided to go north to the second city of Aleppo.  I knew people at the Russian cultural center who spoke English, and I needed to get information on bus tickets.  There I met a Palestinian girl named Majdulian.  She had big brown round eyes and a beautiful smile, and was very helpful in finding me the best way to get to Aleppo and made a few calls to different bus companies.  After my ticket was reserved, we got into a short conversation about her homeland.

“Pit, I cannot go to where I’m from.  We Palestinians cannot go to my village anymore.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s Israel’s now,” she said with melancholy.  “I cannot go home.”

She looked up at me from her desk with her big brown eyes and said.

“But you can go Pit,

She stared at me.

“You can go Pit, you have an American passport.  The American passport is no problem in

Israel.”

I couldn’t come up with anything to say.

That afternoon I took a cab out to the bus station on the east side of the Damascus.  The station itself was a bit run down and was surrounded by a dirt parking lot; people moved in all directions.  I got through security and went up to an office where I picked up my ticket.  There was an hour to spare before departure.  I stood alone with my bag on the platform watching busses move in and out of the station.  The sun was shinning brightly and warmed my face and made me squint my eyes.  To my left was a beautiful, well-dressed girl.  She looked over towards me.  We made steady eye contact.  She could tell I foreign and I could tell that she was beautiful.   I approached her and said, “Salam Aleikum,” (the standard Arabic greeting that means “peace be with you”).

She looked at me and smiled.

“Nice to meet you,” she replied.

“What is your name?”

“Najuwa,” she said with a smile.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“I’m from Homes a city north of here.”

“Oh,” I said.  “Why were you in Damascus?”

“I had a conference here, I’m a doctor at home,” she said.

She was stunningly beautiful.  I felt like she was interested in me by the way she gazed at me with her dark and mystical Middle Eastern eyes.  Or perhaps she did this to everyone.   I noticed attentive men around us that took interest in our conversation.  I felt a bit hesitant to move closer to her, feeling as though fifty of her older brothers were there.

“How are you?’ said a girl with very white skin and red hair in almost perfect English.

She seemed to move in from out of my periphery, but it was obvious she was listening to our conversation.

“I’m doing well,” I said.

She positioned her body to block Najuwa out.

“My name is Anisa.”

“So where are you from in the United States?” she said quickly, attempting at keep my eyes from Najuwa.

I was thinking about what way I needed to direct my attention.  I didn’t speak for a while but eventually said,

“I live in Nevada at the moment.”

“Where are you going?” she replied quickly.

Najuwa looked as disappointed with the situation, as was I.

“I’m heading up to Aleppo tonight and then I will go back to Damascus in a

couple of weeks.”

I loved the fact that Anisa’s English was almost perfect.  I could speak at a regular cadence and I could also understand her perfectly, but I hated the fact she was pulling me away from Najuwa.

“Oh, I’m going north too,” she said with a smile.

The bus driver honked the horn.  It was time to go.  I looked over to my left and saw Najuwa distance herself.  She didn’t like my diversion of attention and probably felt uncomfortable with the level of English with which Anisa and I were speaking.

The bus to Aleppo began to load so I moved my baggage and my body closer to it.  Najuwa became more distant through the sea of people.  She looked at me over the crowd and smiled.  Everything paused around me except for her gaze.  I got on the bus and pressed myself up to the window.  Najuwa waved gently at me from the platform, her stunning eyes beaming right through me.  I wanted to see her again, and I felt an impulse to run off of the bus to spend more time with her.  I felt at least I should get her number.  But I didn’t.  She gazed through my window and attempted to either destroy me or love me with her eyes. The bus started up, and engaged into reverse and then grinded into first gear.  Dust kicked up around us, and  “Joy To The World” came blaring out of the bus speakers.  Everything was squeaking and rattling as we drove over potholes.  My intense eye contact with Najuwa finally severed.  We reached the paved main road and sped off.  The glare of the late afternoon sun beamed through the windows of the bus and put soft light on everyone. The next song had a chorus that repeated “Palestine,” in a deep male voice.