From Aleppo

It is a good feeling to be on an empty road, heading into the hills. The highway out of Damascus is loud and full of heavy lorries, trundling to Baghdad, Aleppo, Beirut. It is quiet here; there are a few houses set back from the road amidst dusty fields and orchards of olive trees. And I ride slowly up the gently rising hillside to Maalula.

The village sits between two grey-faced cliffs; concrete houses and crucifix-spired churches and narrow lanes are crammed between the walls of stone that overhang the little village. On the ledge of the southern outcrop there is a statue of the virgin Mary, in blue robes, head-bowed. On the northern hillside a gleaming white figure of Jesus, arms outstretched, stares out across the valley.

Beneath the crest of the northern rockface there is a white-bricked convent. I lean my bike against the open metal gates and ask one of the nuns if İ may stay the night here. She looks down disapprovingly at my knees and says İ must speak to Sister Mariam. I follow her through a courtyard, past a small shelter full of icons and candles, past the brass-gilded doors of the chapel, into a brightly lit corridor. Sister Mariam smiles and looks down disapprovıngly at my knees and İ say İ am on a bicycle and she nods and points me to a bedroom.

She tells me that if İ follow a path through the rocks behind, and climb up the hill, I will come to another church. She says it is one of the oldest ın the world. She says the fathers there still speak Amharic. I walk there later, through a narrow cleft ın the rock, which seems to have formed inconceivably; it is just a few feet wide and banked on both sides by shear walls of stone, sixty feet high. In the courtyard to the church a father in black robes stands smiling, staring at two cats playing. He doesn't notice me and I go into the little stone chapel and light a candle.

In the morning I walk down the steps towards the village and Sister Mariam calls me back. She leads me into a dining room and gives me warm bread and olives and boiled eggs and a bowl of walnut jam.

İ coast down the hill and rejoin the highway. The pine trees on the roadside bow towards me; their narrow trunks bent by strong southerly winds. Today the wind flows from behind me and I ride fast. Cars flash past and the endless fields of barren yellow earth roll by. The days are short now and night is already falling as İ reach the clocktower at Hama, 170 km to the north. A shallow green river runs through the town and on the banks old wooden waterwheels are attached to crumbling walls. They are not turning anymore. I sleep on the roof of a hotel and am woken before dawn by all the calls to prayer trumpeting out across the city. I look up, bleary eyed, at neon minarets glowing green in every direction.

There is little to draw my eyes from the tar ahead of the handlebars, on the road to Aleppo. The land is flat and the fields the same. Groups of women in multi-coloured shawls, and shemaghs masking their faces, pick olives from the low trees off the road, and there is litter strewn along the dry ditches beside the tarmac. I think it is a shame that İ must take the highway, but my map does not show the country roads.

Aleppo is an old city and there is a great citadel on a mound at its centre. Near the foot of the citadel a network of enclosed alleyways runs for what seems to be miles, housing the city's souk. The tunnels are full wıth crowds; boys on bicycles, men on scooters, women carrying heavy sacks on their heads, and tea-boys rushing around with trays held high. I spend a morning here, and ask some of the stall-holders if I may take their photographs. Tomorrow I ride to Turkey.

From Damascus

I ride east towards Syria, down a winding hillside road, through olive groves and forests of low pine trees, shedding their browning needles on the dry earth below. I stop for tea where the land flattens, already far from Amman, and a man in mechanic's overalls sits beside me. He peers over at the map and says Iraq. I point to Baghdad and he smiles and nods. I read Fulluja, Najaf, Basra, and he says yes, yes, yes, after each and smiles.

Every mile I pass fruit vendors, lying behind polystyrene crates of apples and pomegranates and tomatoes. They look up dozily at me and flick the ends off the cigarettes and lean back down. I reach Jerash and go to the old Roman city there. Teachers lead groups of school girls up the long avenue of stone columns and the girls run up to the tourists and say good-morning and what’s-your-name. I ride up a country lane into the hills and camp beneath an olive tree, the whole valley below filled with patches of forest and villages of white stone houses.

It is only fifty kilometres to the border and I stop for some bread and look up, for the last time, at the smiling Jordanian king in the photo above the counter. Here he is playing with his young son. His picture is everywhere; smiling in a suit and tie, in army uniform surveying his troops, standing happily with his seated wife. I leave Jordan and ride the short stretch through no-man’s land, past cement century posts looking out above the fields, into Syria, where I am ushered into an office at immigration. I look up at the Sryian president staring down from above the desk. His eyes are very close together and he has an immaculate moustache. He smiles uneasily, looking embarrassed, as if a puppy had just pee-ed on his leg. I have no visa and the official looks at me curiously. He examines each page of my passport over and over, and asks me to promise I have never been to Israel. 'If I find you have another passport in your baggages.' He pauses and smirks and his left eye narrows to a squint. 'And if I find an Israel stamp there. I will be very angry.' He hands me back my passport, freshly stamped, and waves me off.

I am 120 kilometres from Damascus and I rush across the dry scrubland with the wind behind me. I stop for tea and the tea-man won't accept my money and hands me two packs of biscuits and a handful of seeds. I ride on past shiny new service stations and ragged, shepherd's tents, and as the light fades I see the tall cement blocks of the city's suburbs ahead. It is dark now and I stop and ask for the old town and I am pointed this way and then another. I am on a busy one-way road, cycling against the traffic. I pass white-haired men in blue aprons, working on huge black printing machines, and brightly lit pastry shops, and old men playing backgammon and smoking shishas in dim cafes, and men engraving headstones in enclaves dug into an old stone wall that lines the road. I ride for over an hour, up and down the same streets, staring at everything. I am startled by a horn, and I swerve, and my eyes return to the road, and then drift back to the street sides. Eventually I find a bed in a dormitory off Souq Saroujah and eat and fall asleep.


It is Friday, and in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque large groups of women in black hijabs sit listening to preachers, under gold-leafed domes that stand on stone stilts across the marble terrace. The facade of the main chamber is gilded with a gold and green mosaic showing trees and fruit, and on three corners of the enclosure there are cream minarets patterned with black and ochre bricks.

I walk down the main arcade that leads into the old city. There is a high curved roof of corrugated metal above the line of clothes stalls and ice cream parlours and epiceries. Ahead there is a large crowd and I hear the beating of drums. Palestinian flags and black flags, branded with white crossed rifles, are waving in the air. Children, in camouflage uniforms and purple berets, stationary-march amidst a crowd of clapping elders. The children slowly leave the shadows of the souq and move through the streets. They join other groups, and policemen block the traffic, and at the front two little girls lead the crowd, dressed like toy soldiers, flags raised, smiling sweetly.