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I’m typing away on my laptop in the breezy sitting room of my hotel in Aleppo. On the couches next to me, a group of Syrians on holiday are digging into a massive plate of
shish tawook - the tomatoes and onions and skewers of chicken filling the room with a mouth-watering pungence. I’ve already fattened myself on a plate of kebabs nearby, chasing it down with an ice cream cone that, at S£5 - or about ten American cents - is bound to be my latest vice in the sweltering days ahead. The girls - plump and smiling and wearing lavish amounts of make-up - are giving me suggestive looks over their chicken, while their chaperone talks in a deep, melodious Arabic that rises and falls like it’s being carried out to sea.
If there’s a lesson to be learned in Syria, it’s that no stomach goes unfed - especially when there’s more than enough
tawook to go around. One of the girls, who fills out her lime-green track suit like an All-Pro tackle, won’t take no for an answer. She comes over with a spoonful of diced tomatoes and grabs me by my cheeks, doing her best
plane-goes-into-the-hangar routine. There are approving chuckles from around the table, and soon they’re foisting bits of chicken and soft, warm bread upon me. Aleppo’s getting off to a very good start. Though I’ve come for the mighty citadel and the endless labyrinth of its souqs, I’m happy to get acquainted with this town’s hospitality before venturing down the usual tourist roads.
I’ve quickly learned that certain tourist roads are best avoided. Most notorious of all, it seems, is the Springflower Hotel, a travelers’ haunt that’s managed to build an inexplicable following in spite of its dubious reputation. My guidebook had already warned about the seedy staff spying on girls through peepholes in the shower, and when I voiced my concern to a local who recommended the place, he shrugged and smiled and said, “It’s okay for you. You’re a guy.” Comfortably settled at Al-Gawaher Hotel instead - a place that, coincidentally, is run by the father of a local
CouchSurfer - I can sleep easy knowing that while my calves are getting a work-out from the dreaded squat toilets, I can at least scrub my backside without soliciting whistles from the wall socket.
In the afternoon I set
out for the Old City, its roots stretching back through more than seven thousand years of history. The souqs are Aleppo’s main attraction, with their vaulted stone passages and cluttered stalls spilling spices and nuts and fabrics onto the street. In spite of my travels in the Arab world - pushing six months at this point - I can’t seem to get enough of this controlled bedlam. Women heaving sacks of cashews onto their heads; old men puttering on dusty motorcycles left over from the days of Vichy France. In fact, I’m starting to recognize these same motifs recurring in roll after roll of travel pics, along with such time-tested favorites as “Old Woman Sitting in the Shade” and “Old Man Squinting and Making a Sighing Face That Suggests the Only Reprieve From a Life of Toil and Misery is a Quick, Painless Death or a Young Girl in Tight Jeans.” After nearly 7,000 pictures snapped in close to a dozen countries, I still get heart palpitations anytime I see a guy in a fluttering
gelabbiyah pedaling a bicycle down the street.
That’s not to say these souqs can’t still pack a few surprises. On Souq Al-Atarin, the main
artery that leads to the magnificent hill-top citadel, I get accosted by a guy in a pastel-checkered shirt whose hands flutter as he shows me some colorful scarves. “It is happy hour,” he says. “We offer temptation prices.” He’s draping the fabric over his arm and caressing it tenderly, calling out to the tourists who pass by. When a stocky woman with short hair and muscular forearms shrugs him off, he turns to me and says, “I like tough, but not the women.
“I know: too much information.”
Quite unexpectedly, I’ve stumbled upon the gayest fabric shop in Aleppo. Majid makes effete little gestures with his eyelids and hisses at the passing traffic. When a handsome British tourist gets lured into the shop, Majid offers a lingering handshake that we practically have to pry apart with a crowbar. Later he shakes hands with a pair of soldiers in neatly pressed khakis, following their taut rears down the souq with admiring eyes. “It’s a pleasure to fill you up,” he calls after them. Ahmed, who runs the shop with him, sits on the edge of a stool and sighs.
“This is a desert, man. We are thirsty here.”
When I ask about the challenges of being gay in Aleppo, Ahmed - who, in spite of his louche veneer, claims straightness - admits that it’s not easy. But before he can wax philosophic, he’s distracted by a German woman in white linen pants who’s sniffing a few piles of spices nearby. The color’s rushed to his rosy cheeks, his face approaching something close to reverie. Majid, quick to break the mood, insists, “She looks like Sally Field.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“She’s old.”
“She’s experienced.”
Majid rolls his eyes and asks how long I’ll be staying in town. He makes a half-hearted pitch to push a few pashminas on me, though we both know I’m about as likely to walk away from their shop with a shawl as he’s likely to go ballroom dancing with Ban Ki-Moon. He stares at the old shuffling men in their
kufi caps and
gelabbiyah and says, “Fuck them. Fuck them all.” Then, as three women draped in black
chadors pass us by, he elbows me in the rib cage and says, “Look: tents with legs.”
The next day my eye infection returns with a vengeance. There’s another long
day of ducking into the shadows and dodging the sun. I pick up some antibiotics from a local pharmacy, ignoring the somber warnings about glaucoma and the fact that the guy who checks out my puffy eyes admits he’s a podiatrist. Back at the hotel the girls are smoking
argileh in the lounge, and the portliest of the three sidles up beside me with a look of concern, cooing tenderly in Arabic while I dab at my teary eyes.
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Not Quite Mary Poppins
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Found You!
The title bit says it all. I shall link to you, and use my infintessimal yet oddly influential powers to move my readers here. No more free press for the Douchebags!