North from Hamma, Dead Cities and Aleppo, Syria

Middle East » Syria » East
August 8th 2010

Published: April 13th 2011

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ZenaF

Carved window, Al Bari

Everything I'd read about the Dead Cities said go there at sunset or sunrise, or better yet, go in the winter when the mists rise and experience the full effect of just how eerie cities that were abandoned over 1500 years ago can be....I left Rob in Hama with a stomach bug for company and set off...

I, of course, got there at midday - madness in that heat, and not too surprisngly, I was there alone. The taxi driver was hiding in his car, somewhere in the shade. Battering heat, a vicious sun and utter stillness were eerie enough for me, with no sounds other than the ones I was making - far too evocative and spooky, if anything....
Aleppo: Was here only for a few hours, although I had originally planned to stay for days. Had the most awful trip up to Aleppo from Hama, and back down, come to that - stuck in a taxi with no air conditioning. Fab. Just what I would have ordered for myself - asthmatic, of course - in the middle of a heatwave in the middle east. If I start describing how horrible that experience was, I'll hyperventilate all over again.

Dead Cities : Al Bara

So I won't. ( But I needed help from both Rob and the hotel manager to get up the stairs when I finally got back to Hama. Rob just shoved me, fully clothed, into the shower. And turned on the cold tap....) I'll get him back one day.

In between drinking half of Aleppo's total bottled water supply, I ran around the souks, the tiny ones and the really huge, old medieval one: met a lovely old man who had a brass shop and who spoke perfect English, someone rescued me when I was completely lost in the endless winding lanes that seemed to lead nowhere and I just generally wandered. Impossible to take photos in that old souk, there was barely enough room to walk along the winding lanes, crammed with people.

But the best thing of the whole Aleppo trip was the serene afternoon I spent sitting under the shade of a canopy in the vast courtyard of the Great Mosque in the huge souk: I couldn't take any photos, but a young western woman, head covered and dressed head to toe in vivid red clothes, was handing out sweets to the women and children -

Al Bari

and me - all of us sitting around the ornate washing fountains, the birds flew silently above us and the huge marble square around us bristled and burned with the heat. It may have been chaos and mayhem outside in the souk, but here, in this near-silent square, it was paradise.

Then it was back into that taxi...

2013: THE MOSQUE HAS NOW BEEN SEVERELY DAMAGED IN THE FIGHTING AND THE 11TH CENTURY MINARET HAS BEEN DESTROYED. Horrible to think that it will be a long, long time before anyone finds that kind of serenity again.

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