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If Damascus is the progressive capital of the country, Aleppo is its conservative heart. It doesn’t take too much time on the city’s streets to realize that the hair is a bit more covered, the shirts a bit less snug, the beards a bit more robust than their southern counterparts. After the pleasant jolt I received in Damascus - a jolt not un-related to certain hormonal proddings - Aleppo has settled itself comfortably into the realm of what’s expected. Wandering the souqs and clucking my tongue at the eager touts - a habit I’ve picked up from the natives - I start to suspect that Saladin himself couldn’t feel more at home in the Arab world. In the morning I wake up to a short, thick cup of sweet Turkish coffee; in the afternoon I dig into a plate of kebab and deftly scoop up
hummus with small wedges of bread. In the evening I line up with the locals for stale cones of soft-served ice cream, milling by the busy storefronts while kids go scooting through the crowds.
Aleppo comes to life in these dim, dusk hours. The women spill out into the street: throngs of them in
black veils and
chadors, brusque, broad-shouldered, shopping for cabinets and cookery and boxy overcoats in the cobbled lanes of Al-Jdeida. It’s a sight to see them at work, cradling a toddler against their stout bosoms while they tug at the hem of a dress. The slits of their eyes are remarkably expressive - fine-tuned to the perils of cheap fabric and wily salesmen - and you can’t help but wonder whether those portals haven’t narrowed their view of the world so much as brought the world sharply into focus.
For my part, after weeks of battling eye woes of my own, I’ve managed to fall in with a
CouchSurfer who’s also a licensed optometrist. I spend an afternoon in Mohammed’s shop, watching him straighten frames and file down lenses and go to work on some dusty old machines that remind me of sixth-grade shop class. When he’s finished he brings two chairs onto the balcony, and we watch the clamorous street traffic six stories below as the sun begins to set and the pigeons whirl above the mosque next door. He fires up some
argileh and makes a pot of tea, the customary way to wrap up a work-day
in the Middle East. (Or to start it, for that matter.)
After an hour we’re joined by Hasan, another
CouchSurfer, who’s just come from the doctor’s office. He’d gone to get some shoulder pains checked out, but with great distress he explains the dire diagnosis: there’s nothing wrong with him at all. With his studies coming to an end and mandatory military service looming, Hasan’s eager to slip through any loop-hole he can. He shows us the X-rays, optimistically pointing to a bright, narrow band beneath his shoulder blade. “It is something, no?” he asks. We gather around for a closer inspection, offering our hopeful prognoses that it might be grave indeed.
Mohammed leaves to tend to a customer and Hasan takes me upstairs. The sky is a burnt blaze of copper and rust, the green lights of the city’s mosques flashing to life atop hundreds of minarets. We’re standing on the rooftop in the gloaming of a Syrian dusk, Hasan talking in agitated flourishes and a manila envelope tucked beneath his arm. Short of Pussy Galore and a pair of bullet-proof cuff links, it’s about as close to an espionage thriller as I’m bound to get.
When Mohammed joins us they confer in hushed tones, as if the giant, rusted satellite dishes bolted to the rooftop might somehow beam their talk into living rooms across the country. A few swallows, chattering in the growing darkness, whirl in frenzied circles. From the gray, monolithic government building downtown, a powerful searchlight sweeps the horizon - the implications of which are lost on no one as Hasan breaks some disturbing news.
Earlier in the day he’d had an hour-long sit-down with a pair of Syrian officials. It seems that Hasan’s good-will work with out-of-towners has attracted some unwanted attention from the country’s intelligence apparatus. They’ve been keeping an eye on him for the better part of a year, since an off-duty official overheard him giving directions in English on his cell phone. The get-togethers with visiting
CouchSurfers, the efforts to start an English-language website, geared toward boosting tourism in the country: seen through the distorted lens of Baath Party paranoia, Hasan all but opened up a Zionist pipeline through the souqs of Aleppo.
He’s warning Mohammed to watch his step, and there’s hardly a hint of melodrama about it. But Mohammed’s guard is already up. The day
before, on our way to catch a minibus, he suggested I cook up some dubious Canadian origins should anybody ask. “The way things are now,” he said, “it doesn’t look too good to talk to Americans.” Now the two of them are conferring quietly about the best course of action. There are worries about the website they’ve already poured hours into, though the site was built by friends in Belgium, and they suspect its .eu address can’t be traced back to them.
Other plans are less certain. Mohammed had hoped to put up posters around town, looking for information on the Canadian backpacker who’d gone missing in Hama two months ago. But Hasan warily shakes his head. “You can’t risk it,” he advises. Mohammed grits his teeth and agrees.
“We have to be very, very careful,
yanni,” Hasan says. “Because they are watching us.”
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Not Your Mom
non-member comment
Literary Restraint well-exercised...
...in not heading your entry, "In Aleppo Once." Did you buy the soap?