Syria Before the War

The Temple of Baal Shamin in 1994. It was destroyed by IS in 2015.

Last week I discovered I'd won an award at the annual Awards for Travel Writing Excellence, conducted by the Australian Society of Travel Writers.

As they were presented on Thursday evening at the ASTW's annual convention, this year held in South Africa, it was Friday morning when I heard that one of my articles had been named Best International Travel Story Under 1000 Words.

The winning story was about Syria.

For the past five years the country has been embroiled in a gruesome, heart-rending civil war war which shows no sign of abating. My article, however, was about the visit that Narrelle Harris and I made to the country in 1994, while were resident in Egypt.

Me at Palmyra, Syria in 1994.

As I explained in the article, I was prompted to write the piece last year after IS forces captured Palmyra, executed an archaeologist, and destroyed one of the ancient structures within the famous ruins there.

While writing it, I didn't want it to seem like a complaint from an entitled Western traveller about no longer being able to visit Syria's great monuments. So I made a point of including the people we met in Syria, from hospitality workers to random locals encountered on the street.

The key figure was a small boy who, to our amusement, presented us with a coin as we were looking for a vantage point over a Crusader castle. When it was published in print, the article took the title A Boy and a Coin.

Roman Theatre at Palmyra, Syria in 1994.

It was an unconventional piece of writing for a newspaper's travel section, which usually features attractive places you can visit in the here and now.

Luckily Fairfax's national travel editor Anthony Dennis saw a place for it in the Traveller section, among a series of articles featuring World Heritage sites.

I was very grateful for the opportunity to write about the connections travellers make with the people of the countries we visit, and to highlight what was happening in Syria now.

Arch of Triumph at Palmyra, Syria in 1994.

Though destinations rise and fall in popularity, they don't disappear off the map; the people we meet on our travels are still there, living their lives and trying to make the most of their opportunities. We should remember them in times of trouble.

You can read my Syria story here: A Boy and a Coin.

I you'd like to make a contribution to assist victims of the Syrian civil war, here's a link to the Save the Children Fund's Syria appeal.

Look Upon This Picture, And On This...

When is a famous historic building not a famous historic building? When it's a scale model, of course.

In last week's Canberra post I talked about our visit to Cockington Green Gardens, a tourist attraction filled with miniature replicas of English village settings. However, it also has an international section.

Rather than being filled with humble village miniatures, it's mostly home to replicas of grand historic buildings from around the globe, funded by the relevant national embassy or cultural body.

As I walked around, I realised I'd been to several of the models' originals. There's nothing more fun than playing the "Been there!" game, usually while watching the TV. You know how it goes - an image comes on the screen of the Pyramids, for example, or Edinburgh Castle, and you shout out "Been there!".

You don't know that game? Oh well, we play it here, anyway.

Here are my "Been there!" moments from Cockington Green:

1. Borobudur, Indonesia. On my first trip overseas in 1981, I visited this beautiful 9th century Buddhist monument, containing over 500 Buddha statues within bell-shaped stone structures. Here's my pic from 1981:


... and here's Cockington Green's model:


2. Karlštejn Castle, Czech Republic. This Gothic castle outside Prague was constructed in the 14th century for the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, Charles IV. We snapped this shot on a Central European trip in 1993...

And here's the replica at Cockington Green:


3. Palmyra, Syria. Palmyra was a Roman-era city, now a set of ruins in the Syrian desert. We visited it in 1994, on a holiday from our teaching jobs in Egypt. Here's a pic we took then...


... and here's the model at Cockington Green:


4. Petra, Jordan. The beautiful "rose-red city half as old as time", carved from the rock by the Nabatean civilisation around 100 BCE. Here's our 1994 photo...


... and Cockington Green's version:



5. Trakai, Lithuania. Finally, I visited Trakai in 2008 while taking a side-trip from a Lonely Planet assignment. This place really does look like it's been plucked from Disneyland, as it's a perfect fairy tale castle in the middle of a lake. Here's my shot...

... and here's Cockington Green's model. Hard to pick the fake, huh?

Aleppo: Antiquity and the Pistachio

In 1994 we were teaching English in Egypt, and spent our annual holiday travelling overland through Syria and Jordan. Here’s a slice of our experiences in Aleppo...

“Mohamed Ahmed! Mohamed Ahmed!” The passengers in the shed-like arrival area of Aleppo International Airport mill about in robes, jeans and dresses. They take up the cry as a man pushes through the crowd.

A uniformed guard pushes his passport through a glass partition, and it passes from hand to hand until it's finally secured. He sighs with relief and drags his bag through to the outside world.

Everyone else settles back to wait, including Narrelle and myself, the lone Western travellers who’ve just arrived on an EgyptAir flight from Cairo.

Aleppo (Halab to the locals) is claimed to be the oldest settlement in the world, and has been part of every empire in the Middle East. Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks and French have all ruled here at one time or other, adding their own layers to its history.

Syria's Cold War friendship with the Soviet Union has also left its mark and added to the city’s mystique. Traders from the former Soviet Union pack out Aleppo's seedier hotels, hoping to barter goods to take back to Baku, Erevan, Tbilisi or farther afield. Some shop signs are in Russian, contrasting exotically with the vendors selling French pastries early in the morning to the smell of Turkish coffee.

European architecture nestles beside classic Arabian styles and discordant Soviet-style concrete structures. Devout Muslim women here wear not the headscarf, but a thin black cloth which encompasses the head and looks eerily like a bag. Add all this to the regular bustle of an Arab city and you have a place with an intriguing atmosphere.

One of Aleppo's gems is the Baron Hotel. It once hosted Agatha Christie, as all grand hotels in the Middle East seem to have done. The front bar still has all the old fittings, and in the lounge is a framed copy of TE Lawrence's bill.

On the more traditional side of town is a magnificent covered souq (market) leading upwards to the Citadel. Cloth is Aleppo's specialty, but a stroll through the meat section reveals more uses for animal parts than we had ever thought possible.

There are also pistachios, fustuq in Arabic. Aleppo is famous for them, and almost every pastry we try includes the green nuts as a vital element among the honey, nuts and wheat.

Aleppo's other attraction is its closeness to a number of ancient ruins in the beautiful countryside near the Turkish border. One of the most impressive is the former Basilica of St Simeon, now known as Qala'at Samaan. We get there by paying a bonus to the minibus driver whose route ends at a village a few kilometres from the site.

St Simeon was an early Christian monk who decided to renounce the world and live atop a series of lone pillars. His final pillar, where he spent the last decades of his life, became a place of pilgrimage and an enormous, graceful basilica was constructed around it. Today the pillar is just a boulder on a pedestal, but much of the ruined basilica's walls remain, along with stunning views of the surrounding countryside.

Then we realise we haven’t planned how to return to Aleppo. While we’re pondering by the basilica’s gate, a truck full of Syrian army engineers pulls up and offers us a lift. We’re dropped off at the village, just in time to catch the minibus. Sweet as a fustuq.

Further south from Aleppo, a minibus ride from the city of Homs, lies the Crac des Chevaliers. This magnificent Crusader Castle would be a renowned tourist drawcard in Western Europe, but like other Syrian tourist sites it’s not overcrowded and costs a pittance to enter. The sprawling structure, 800 years old, is in excellent condition and sits atop a hill with an impressive view of Lebanon's distant mountains.

The castle has survived earthquakes and invasions over the centuries, so what we see is close to how it must have looked in its heyday. Clambering up to the ramparts, unfenced and open to all, we feel how much more immediate tourism is in this part of the world; it's often possible to get right up close to the things you've come to see. If somewhat precarious.

Back in Aleppo later in the day, after more fustuq-laden pastries, I’m sucking on an apple-flavoured nargile near the souq. The only occasions I’ve ever smoked have involved these water pipes in the Middle East, and entirely for their visual effect. My head spins, I nod to my fellow patrons, and feel myself sinking slowly into the rhythms of this very old place.

Note: As this article is based on personal experience from some years ago, the author takes no responsibility for readers' reliance on the information within. Always check on the current security situation before travelling to Syria.