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We’ve been sitting and simmering in a minibus for a quarter of an hour, the driver outside smoking his L&M cigarettes and a few hoarse guys shouting out destinations (“Nebeknebeknebek!” “Halebhalebhaleb!”) while people go scurrying around the station, duffel bags and swaddled infants in tow. Within the hour I should be climbing the 343 stone steps to the hill-top monastery of Deir Mar Musa, a centuries-old sanctuary in the desert that’s famous for both its 11th-century frescoes and the free beds it offers for weary pilgrims and - let’s be honest here - budget travelers.
But there’s been a hold-up, and after five minutes a thin, nervous man comes to the door and motions for me to follow. I’m sweating through my shirt and an hour behind schedule besides, but when I ask him “
Shoo?” (“What?”) with no small measure of annoyance, he just nods his head energetically and rubs his hands. It’s a gesture that either implies, “Boy, this heat sure wreaks havoc on the skin,” or “Young foreigner, I’m washing my hands of this messy business - peace be upon you.” Either way, it’s an inauspicious start to the day, and there are looks of condolence
from the chattering girls in the minibus as I haul my backpack into the heat.
He takes me to a stuffy office where a dour official is sitting with his arms folded behind a desk. Beside him a short man is sitting on the edge of an oversized armchair, appealing with agitated hand movements, his moustache twitching. The official looks unmoved; his brown, drooping face registers subtle shades of disapproval. When the petition’s ended the two men sit in silence, the air charged with a potential for great peril and an interminable wait. I greet them in Arabic - “
Assalamu lekum! Chlonak?” - and after a long, heavy pause, they look in my direction. I’ve stepped into the proverbial lion’s den, and it seems that lion hasn’t had a puff of
argileh all day. On the desk an American passport is conspicuously sitting next to a pile of papers, and it doesn’t take much detective work to deduce whose smiling mug is plastered inside.
The official leans forward and sighs. He picks up my passport and flips through the pages with great deliberation, as if there were a particularly enlightening passage inside he’s been trying to
remember all week. He puts it down and shakes his head sadly, clicking his worry beads one by one - undoubtedly counting my misfortunes. “I’m very sorry,” he says, his voice drained of emotion. He turns to look out the window and I follow his gaze, where we can watch the minibus to Mar Musa sputtering off in the distance. He picks up my passport again, weighing it in his palm, as if he were paying by the ounce. Then he looks at me with significance and says, “You cannot go anywhere.”
There are a handful of things you don’t want to hear from the mouth of a Syrian official, and a line like that ranks right alongside “Is that your Mossad bumper sticker?” and “Can you come with us, please?” I play my outraged-American card, letting my voice rise as I make flustered gestures with my hands. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” looking from one face to the other. “I have to be in Mar Musa this afternoon. This is unacceptable.”
It’s a nifty trick if you’re in a bind, FYI, given added poignance by threats to call the embassy.
But the official, coolly calling my
bluff, shrugs and makes the sort of frank, expressive face these Syrians have mastered. It might mean “We’re fresh out of
foul” or “The bus already left” or “I’m afraid the opposition candidate won’t be joining us tonight: they just found his body in the Euphrates.” He taps on his desk-top calendar with a pencil and circles the date. Then he gestures to my passport, its 15-day visa expired. Short of sitting astride an Israeli tank as it plows its way through the West Bank, his face suggests, I couldn’t be caught more red-handed.
I counter with everything I’ve got: I’ve already been to the Immigration Office in Aleppo, I explain, where a trio of stout, moustachioed men gave me assurances that I had a month’s passage in Syria. This seems to catch him off-guard. He looks me in the eye. Then he looks at the calendar. Then he folds his hands and ask, “Are you sure?” It’s revealing to see how word trickles down the chain of command in these parts, dribbling off down some strange tributary, never to be heard from again.
“I’m very sure,” I assure him. Then, less certainly, “I don’t want any problems.”
He shrugs and hands me my passport and minutes later we’re on our way. Our minibus is hurtling toward the desert, a group of young girls in
hijabs chattering away in the backseat. There’s a young mother holding her gurgling infant in the front, and before long the girls are snapping their fingers and clucking their tongues and all but flashing their breasts to get the baby’s attention. They exchange some words with the mother, who suddenly decides to pass her kid around like a bag of Cheetos. In Nebek she tucks him under her arm and surges for the door, like a fullback bursting through the defensive line. The girls get out, one after the other, using their stout arms to help each other to the sidewalk.
The driver leaves me at the foot of the steps to the monastery, where a young Frenchwoman is tending a garden. She has a scarf knotted beneath her chin and a broad-brimmed hat shading her eyes, and if she were stooping over a rice paddy on the outskirts of Luang Prabang, she wouldn’t seem an inch out of place. She gestures to the top of the hill, where
a few buildings are thrust into the cliffs, and asks me to hand a cryptic message to “Robert, the Frenchman.” The path is lined by almond and olive trees, the sun’s beating heavily, and I’m starting to wonder whether high noon was really the smartest time to make a trip into the desert.
At the top there are
kuffiyahed workmen busying themselves with buckets and planks, one of them tugging on a pulley that sends a metal basket far down below to the valley floor. You can hear them arguing in the caves that surround Mar Musa, their voices tumbling from unseen heights, like the judgment of some not-quite-wrathful, but somewhat-pissed-off God. I’m greeted by a group of young Syrians who urge me to make myself at home. Two Europeans - a German and a Dane - are debating doctrinal differences between the Catholic and Lutheran churches. There are buzzards circling above. Whether or not they’ll be feasting on my Godless flesh before long remains to be seen.
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