Syria

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Sorry, there's a big gap from Greece to Syria, I'll try and fill in the blanks soon.

I think I am going to have to put Han down, it's the most humane thing to do. You can't go yanking pretty little English roses out of their fertile soil and then dumping them in hot and dusty sandpits - they wilt.

We have booked into a Homs hotel for a couple of days, to let her recover. It's no hardship, the room is comfortable, the beds beat sleeping on the ground,, and the air conditioning is a breath of...erm, fresh air, compared to waking up in an early morning tent sauna. We don't have a sea to jump in first thing in the morning, or inquisitve strays for Han to adopt, but we do have a full Nilesat package and flushing porcelain. Intrepid adventurers, roughing it in Syria. But it's ok, I've got my excuse, I call her Han.

She has been chewed on and bitten by every bug from here back to Britain, and since entering the Middle East, has been struggling with the heat. Those two complaints aren't really reasons in themselves to stay in luxury, but at least she has the chance to recuperate and regain her vitality in comfort while we wait until she is able to put weight on her ankle again. That is our main reason for not moving on - Han is physically incapable of it. There is another teeny-tiny little reason - but I'll get to that later.

After riding around the unsignposted streets of Homs, getting far too into the Arab way of the road - both ways up one ways, across paths and over pedestrian precincts, I negotiated a fair price for a hotel. While I spoke inside, Han looked after the bike. When I came back outside to tell her we were staying put, she was so excited she threw herself off of the kerb. I was looking her way, starting to untie our luggage, when she just disappeared. One second she was there, the next she was gone. With a clatter and a yelp she hit the floor and I immediately started laughing, thinking it was a regular 'An tumble. I then felt very guilty when I realised she wasn't getting up. I walked around the bike to where she lay prostrate after falling off a kerb almost as tall as her. 'I can't see,' she blurted. The pain of the 6 inch unassisted freefall had blacked her out. Now I felt really guilty.

I scraped her up off the concrete, while the hotel staff came out to watch the spectacle. A young arab looked after our bike while I half carried Hannah upstairs. Of course, our room was on the top floor - and of course, the lift was out of action.
She now lies on the bed, damning the eyes of all the flies to have sucked on her sweet blood, swearing long sentences of four letter expletives, and complaining about the state of Syrian roads and the size of their kerbstones.

I mentioned that there was another tiny reason for staying in comfort - which may not be entirely connected to Hannah. Well, at all really. Just a tiny, tiny reason, of course letting Hannah rest her injuries and hide from the heat and flies is the main reason, but I must be honest and admit that I have a little reason of my own for enjoying the recuperation. Well, two, in the form of two fifty pence sized blisters on the balls of my feet. I suppose I should tell the tale of how I earned them.

On the way to Homs, we visited the Crac Des Chevalliers, a place I had fantasised about as a child, but lost somewhere in the mists of my mind during the transition to adulthood. The tin and plastic knights I once played with fought pitched battles against the tenacious tin and plastic Moslem hordes in sandpit mock ups of the famous fortress. With the bow and arrow my dad made me, I would shoot Moors and Berbours and Bedouins from bucket and spade battlements, while my lionhearted crusaders waited in the sandy wastes to storm the gates. The knights always won of course, which doesn't exactly mirror history, but I was 6, knights can't lose when you are 6, they are as invincible as you believe you are yourself at 6 years old.

For years, if I had imagined a castle, it was the Crac. Then I bewcame teenaged, and eventually adult(ish,) and I lost that mental image somewhere at the back of my mind. Life happened, and neither me nor the knights were invincible anymore. Then I saw the picture on the back of a tourist map, and memories flooded back. I knew I had to go. I hadn't even known that it was in Syria.

Yes, I am digressing, but I will get to the blisters.

Our jouney to the castle went smoothly for the first 99%, all on easy Syrian motorway. Of course, there were the odd murder attempts from nameless would be killers, barely awake at the wheel, as well as stray dogs causing traffic hazards for shits and giggles and tracts of dry grass on the roadside in flames from carelessly tossed cigarettes. But pretty smooth nonetheless. Until the last 1%. The castle is visible from the road, which gave me little boy excitment as soon as I saw its distinctive silhouette. From the valley, the fortifications is an imposing sight, occupying a hill which is steep in parts, completely unclimbable in others. The road we were given to assault the castle was merely steep. The little Honda battled heroically up the first couple of kilometres of twisty mountain roads not disimilar to Spain, or France. The the fracas stepped up a notch, steep became steeper, and steeper became stupid. My left foot kept clicking down trying to find another gear, but to no avail, there was nothing left. Hairpin after hairpin we slogged on. The speedo needle barely quivered from it's resting point. The bike squealed in pain. Sat atop her, I could empathise with her pain, she was in the same sweet realms of exhausted agony that I remember from torturous beastings back in my army days. The ones where your legs cease to be yours, your lungs smoulder and catch light as your brain tries desperately to ignore the atom bomb strikes of pain coming from every inch of the body. But that kind of exhaustion has only one outcome - you collapse at some point.

The Honda collapsed. With one last wheezy breath, she ground into exhausted silence. 'Get off, get off,' I yelled at Han. The hill was so steep that even with both brakes on, I couldn't stop the bike sliding back. She jumped off, and the bike, the hill and I met in a sort of stalemate. We weren't going backwards anymore, but we weren't exactly going forwards either. Trying not to drop her, I clambered off and attempted to push. It was no good, my flip-flops couldn't get purchase on the slick mountain road. Only one thing for it...

I kicked my shoes off. 'Oooh, ground seems a bit hot.' The steepest part of the hill had less than twenty metres left, so one good effort should have done. Skipping on the balls of my feet I began to run forwards, trying to use the bikes' weight and momentum to get it up the hill. Han ran behind, pushing the backbox, she kicked off her shoes too. Panting, we made it to the top. The concrete started to feel more than hot, burning hot you might say. I skipped my little dance, holding the bike while Han trotted back to get the flip flops. We put them back on and sat down to rest. It was then that my feet started really hurting. I took a look at their soles. Bugger. A fat blister on the ball of each, a bright white STOP! etched against the scorched red background of my sole.

So yes, there is that little thing, Han may be my excuse, but it is pretty damn good to be able to rest my feet and keep the wounds clean for a couple of days. Who would have thought black tarmac could get so hot in 40 degree sunshine? Mong. Joel Burdall, putting the 'dick' into ridiculous since 1985.

Anyway, no pain, no gain. Our little bit of pain had got us up the steepest section of the hill, so we jumped back on and rode to the castle. After paying a paltry 3$ entry fee, we just walked in. No hassles, no queues, no second mortgage required to afford it - some European attractions could learn a lot. The temptation to augment it and turn it into something it's not, has been resisted too - it is just as it was left. It still has nooks and crannies to break your leg in, steep slippery stairs to throw yourself down, unfenced ramparts to fall off of. It is unscaffolded and there are no drinks kiosks. dark corners reek of urine and fat lizards bask on mossy rocks. Graffiti dating back a thousand years and dating back a month sit side by side, and parts are only accessible by clambering and climbing over collapsed rubble. It's been left to grow old gracefully, free of the face-lift facades and clever cosmetics of similar European sites. I like.

We hobbled around the incredible ruins for nearly three hours. It almost seems wrong to call them ruins - although parts are slightly decayed and some stones have crumbled, the majority bears testament to what an incredible feat of martial might it once was. Walking around it, it is difficult to see how anyone could be crazy enough to attack it. Every angle is covered by fire from murderous arrow slits, almost impossible to fire back into, minor valleys channel would be attackers into charnel killing zones, enfiladed completely. Every position is covered by another, and every one has a fall back. Even if by some miracle, the first wall was breached, the attackers (having climbed a mountain under fire, broken down a solid stone wall and fought their way through the first line of defence) would find themselves faced with a deep moat, backed by a 50 foot slope, all covered by fire from the keep. Madness. The sheer ingenuity is breathtaking, man can achieve anything in the name of killing his brothers.

After countless stairs, reaching the top of the citadel is as metaphorically breathtaking as the stairs are literally. For a crusading knight to stand up there in the heavens with the Holy Land stretching before him, it must have felt like God himself was by his side. 100 years later and the Holy wars still continue. From the top, Lebanon can be seem, and Iraq is less than 300k distant. The wars continue, even though the knights are long dead, and their castle redundant. Those zealots who once stood here believed their reign would last a thousand years, and bring peace and prosperity to the Holy Lands. Now their bones feed the fertile Levant soil, and their empty castle echoes to the sound of camera shutters. Moslem, Jew and Christian alike died for these contested stones and the impassive land around them. 10 centuries later and we still fight. Our castles have become countries, our justifications more convoluted, our weapons deadlier and machination more codified, but we've not got any less stupid.

Talking of stupid. As I write this, Han sits on the bed feeling sorry for herself. She's had another accident. Her eyes are red and puffy, and her ankle hurts even more than it did before. I was sitting and staring out of the window, watching flocks of birds whirl in the setting sun, when I heard plaintive cries coming from the bed. She had attempted to spray deet on herself, to repel the annoying mosquitoes, but not concentrating, she had sprayed it straight into her eyes. Then in her blind panic she had jumped up to wash her eyes out, but put all her weight on her bad ankle. In pain she stumbled straight into the only obstruction in the room, a jut of metal to stop the door banging on the wall, she stubbed her toe into it and collapsed into the bathroom. She's ok now, but like I said, I think it is the most humane thing to do if I put her down.

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Comments

[Trevor & Jan]

Hi!
Hello both and I hope that you manage to update the blog soon! Am loving it!. It was fantastic to meet you both in Aqaba. We're in Cairo having applied for Ethipoian visas today and Sudanese (not looking forward!) tomorrow. Where are you guys staying? We're in Salma Camping in Giza. A bit of a shit hole but seemingly the only place to camp. Although they fumigate every day, the mosquitoes are organised into squadrons and attack on command (I think!). The tubes of Anthisan are working overtime as are the tins of industrial strength Deet.