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While the mercury’s been steadily climbing in Damascus - it’s a hazy 95 on the day I skip town - a heat wave is hardly the time to visit the desert. But it’s my grave misfortune that Palmyra - the legendary sandstone city and so-called “Bride of the Desert” - was plopped down about 100 miles from the ass-crack of Nowhere. It’s on the wrong side of 100 when my bus pulls into town; even the shifty cab driver who greets me at the station seems too exhausted to rip me off. The city barely stirs in the mid-afternoon heat. The shopkeepers are sitting out front in the shade, spitting date pits onto the sidewalk; the restaurant touts half-heartedly call out to passersby, wiping their foreheads against their sleeves.
At my hotel the desk clerk is lazily fanning himself in the sitting room. He shows me a small, stuffy room and optimistically switches on the ceiling fan, as if those slow whirring blades might somehow bring with them a blast of arctic chill. Four hundred Syrian pounds and one cold shower later, I’m tramping through the dusty heat toward the ruins, my pockets stuffed with dates and my brow
already beaded with sweat. Rusting flat-beds plow by, kicking up clouds of dirt while cheerless men squat in the back; gleaming white SUVs full of pink-faced tourists speed between the ruins. A few kids shanghai me with postcards near the outer walls, and after a few brusque rejections they dart back behind the rocks and broken columns, like desert lizards looking for a cool patch of shade.
It’s hardly a day for sight-seeing, though I give it all the strength I can muster. I tramp down the city’s long colonnade and snap pics of the old temples. A few guys on camels follow me for twenty minutes, offering discount rides. In the amphitheater a tech crew is setting up lights on a make-shift stage: I’ve arrived during the annual Palmyra Festival, and they’re preparing for a concert the next night. Later in the week, the Lebanese pop tart Nancy will be performing for, no doubt, an avidly screeching audience. It’s a spectacle I’ll sadly have to miss, though the promise of a writhing Lebanese girl is almost enough to make me juggle my plans.
That evening there’s a thunderous downpour over the city, the clouds rolling in
and opening up and rinsing the dusty desert air. A cool breeze blows in, a merciful bit of respite that brings everyone out of their homes to sit on the street. But in the morning the heat returns - thick, brown, blistering - and I haul ass to the station to catch the first air-conditioned bus out of town.
In Homs I meet a couple of young Syrian guys, eager to help steer me toward the minibuses to Hama. I appreciate their generosity, though it’s not long before their ruse becomes apparent: there’s a separate station for north-bound buses across town, and the boys have wisely surmised that hitching along in the American’s cab will save them eighty Syrian pounds - or just under two American bucks. Sure enough, when we reach the station they don’t even put on the appearance of reaching into their wallets, though they’re good enough to take me as far as the ticket window for Hama before disappearing into the crowd.
On the Pullman I fall in with another couple of guys whose motives are far less self-serving. They make wisecracks and have some fun at my expense, enjoying the sight
of a hapless American stumbling his way through their glottal tongue. Along the way they’re pointing out the modest landmarks we pass - dams and institutional-looking university buildings - and in Hama, they take me as far as my hotel lobby. Osama, a pudgy, cherubic medical student with a three-day growth on his cheeks, helps haul my bag upstairs and negotiates with the receptionist to make sure I’m getting a fair price. Then he offers his phone number - along with the number of his cousin, a guide at the town’s museum - before wishing me a happy stay in his city.
Hama’s massive waterwheels are what bring most tourists to town, and their creaking serenade gives the place its distinctive score. On the bus ride Osama described the sound “like a song,” though it’s more the groaning, heart-rending ballads of a Fayrouz - to borrow from the Lebanese - than any of the bubblegum tunes so popular on MTV Arabia. There are a few families gathered beside the massive wheel downtown, the women in black
chadors, the kids scooting around in cheap plastic sandals and brightly colored sweatshirts. They snap pictures while the wheel turns and scoops
water from the filthy Orontes River, one grave man filming with a camcorder as the water sprays onto the viewing platform and the rest of us go scurrying for cover.
I take a walk around town, with its cluttered souqs and stone-walled Old Town and wooden wheels churning. On a bridge spanning the river upstream, a lithe young kid in skimpy swimming trunks is wobbling on the guardrail, waiting for encouragement. He gets heckled by a few friends until I give him a hopeful thumbs-up, and then he dives into the murky green water that almost single-handedly gives the word “pellucid” a reason to pop up in the dictionary.
Back at the Cairo Hotel I’m tugging on a web of intrigue. In Damascus I’d overheard talk of a missing Canadian girl, though it hardly made much of an impression at the time. But an email from a
CouchSurfing friend flushes out the details, offering an eerie backdrop to my first day in Hama. Not only was the girl last spotted in this same town - using it as a base to explore some ruins nearby - but she was staying in the very same hotel. In
fact, her backpack is still being held by the hotel staff - though the guy at reception deftly sidesteps my questions like he’s doing the Charleston, eager to talk about soccer instead.
That night, as I’m finishing up some emails on the hotel computer, a pretty blonde approaches me with a sly, conspiratorial smile. At this point, I can say that the night’s off to a good start. She lowers her voice and looks over both shoulders and then suggests, “Can you come to my room for a second?”
At this point, it’s suddenly gotten that much better.
It turns out she’s a reporter with the English-language Al-Jazeera station, in town to dig up some dirt on the missing Canadian. She’d heard second-hand reports of my “lead” in Damascus, though the reality is as disappointing to her as this latest turn in the evening’s events is to me. I’m sitting on the edge of her bed while she nibbles on her pen and goes over the facts: that the girl was an experienced backpacker not known for taking risks; that no one can say for sure that she actually got on a bus in
Hama; that some frilly underthings are dangling from the chair next to me (my addition).
“This just doesn’t smell right to me,” she says.
“I’d love to ravage your taut reporter behind,” I want to reply. Instead, I offer my earnest hopes that she unravel this mystery, along with a sincere desire to help in any way - ANY way - I can. She thanks me and starts to scribble in her pad, not even looking up as I show myself to the door. Feeling slightly used in the hallway, I make a mental note to play coy next time around, holding out on the Q&A till I’ve done a little prodding of my own.
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