What an Intersting Week I've Had
In the past seven days Chris and I have been all around the Syrian countryside, visited two castles, seen many ancient ruins, been offered the sales of antiquities, and viewed a Pro-Syrian government demonstration in the middle of town.
Because of our teacher's hollidays we had two days off during the middle of the week in which we decided to travel to Hama. It has been in the news at home sporadically, but Hama was home to a massacre some years ago. The only thing noticable from then was that Hama was the cleanest city in Syria, it's aquaducts had been rebuilt in places (blown up), and one of it's water wheels was reconstructed (also blown up). The city, in general, was very nice and made an excellent outpost to make journeys for the next two days.
On the first day we visited Assassin's Castle, and Night's Castle (Crac de Chevalier). Apparently the word assassin is the name of a Shiite clan that would roam the area finding and killing Sunni's. The castle was a nice fortress located high on a plain with nice defenses. The coolest things about castles here is they were continually deffended and attacked. Chris said that many of the coolest castles in England were never attacked so nobody knows how well they were designed or built. These things were attacked many times and even today they are still standing in really good condition.
Crac de chevalier was the most amazing castle I have ever seen. It was high on a hill, with a wall that was had only two entrances. The main entrance was followed by stables and defenses internally, while the secondary entrance was probably a service entrance that led into the main stores and kitchen areas. It was soo cool I just geeked out and took tons of pictures. Some pictures were of fossils and geodes in the actual foundation rocks. All around it was the coolest thing I have ever seen.
The second day we worked our way through Apomea (Sp?), and two of the many dead cities that are all over central Syria. Apomea would be Palmyra if it was never discovered. The ruins are just sitting in an open field with most of it's area not even dug up and studied. I guess it was a travel and trade center and it's columns stretch over a kilometer in length. There are many half dug ruins and many clay pipes laying about from what I would assume to be a massive water system. The area all around the main columns is farmed and plowed. Everywhere there is scattered clay pieces of destroyed history. Mounds that are grown over just waiting to be dug up and studied. It's sad to see such an amazing historical sight just getting wrecked with every pass of the plow. On the flip side, since nobody wants to come to Syria, most of the sights are amazingly in tact. There were locals there that dig through the plowed fields and ruins looking for things to sell foreigners. We were offered Greek, Roman, and Byzantium copper coins, silver coins, clay sculptures, and other antiquities that belonged in a museum and not some tourists pocket. I don't believe in taking things from ancient sights unless they are going to be preserved for the greater good. Maybe I will buy some things and donate them to a museum. The government doesn't put any money into tourism, if they did they would have a boom economy...just after they made some political reforms :)
The dead cities were also amazingly well kept with animals grazing in them and people living near, and sometimes in, the ancient ruins. Most were Roman or Byzantine cities that were abandoned after earthquakes or destroyed all together. They are an amazing example of period construction and planning. Again they should be cataloged and preserved not left to rot. In villages nearby random pieces of Roman columns have been used to build stone walls and other things. The rocks are scattered everywhere.
After being back at school for a day we were notified that Thursday was a half-day due to the government using buses and closing roads for people to come and demonstrate in a Pro-Syria rally downtown. We stayed and played basketball at school, and by the time we left to go home the roads had been blocked. We took a microbus the long way home getting off downtown right in the middle of the demonstration. An interesting mix of the different political groups and ages of support showed up for the demonstration. There were plenty of village kids in their early teens to early twenties. College men and women marching with flags of "God, Syria, Bashar, Baath" ...at least the order of importance isn't as scary as it could be. It was a very peaceful, well organized demonstration that had fluid movement of people coming and going. Chris and I figured today there were between five and ten thousand people in attendance, maybe more but not by much. The organized groups marched on the square, chanted and left. The villagers that had nothing better to do just hung around. In Syria they are the class equivelent of what the British call commoners and what Americans call hicks. To my observation the more educated younger people were in organized groups supporting an idea, and the villagers just showed up because it was something to do. After we got home and changed out of our sweaty clothes we went back and took a few pictures. Someone had hung a giant banner saying something like " we don't like Bosh, the American people are not the ruling administration." It was poorly worded and misspelled but you get the idea. I have a nice picture and will whip it out on anyone that wants to argue about Syrian people. We met some guys from one of the socialist groups and chatted with them for a while before we drew too much attention from the bored villagers and had our crowd broken up by the police. Actually it was amusing...in Arabic I aplogized to the police officer and Chris told him we were all friends. He looked at us like we were on crack and just backed away. After that we figured we should walk out, so we walked off through the park and went downtown for a while until the square could cool down. Everywhere you go you will find intelligent well spoken people with whom you can have a conversation with, and ignorant punks that have no respect or manners. Some of the villagers were tapping us on the shoulder while we were talking to the other guys and one jackass poked me in the ass (I guess 'cause my long hair). He did it again and I snatched his fingers up and nearly broke them in half. He cowarded down and hid as I stared down every person behind me with his twisted fingers held up and stared them down. Chris had a similar experience with some tapping and poking, and Ben was shuffled our of the circle within a few minutes. Chris and I decided that if we didn't stand up to those stupid fucks we wouldn't have been able to have the conversations we wanted with the people we wanted. All things considered we were in a square full of cops and army guys, but nonetheless I get pissed off anytime anyone shows an ignorant misjudgement in manners.
After drinking a few beers and deciding we were stupid, (Chris thought it was brilliant, but no one was poking him in the ass) we made our way home. That night, last night, I purchased my tickets to come home for nine days and it has been on my mind ever since. I fly home in almost a week and I am psyched to go there. I hope everyone fights mismannered punks in the same death defying dilligence that I have :) On that note I am going home to poke Chris in the ass!
Because of our teacher's hollidays we had two days off during the middle of the week in which we decided to travel to Hama. It has been in the news at home sporadically, but Hama was home to a massacre some years ago. The only thing noticable from then was that Hama was the cleanest city in Syria, it's aquaducts had been rebuilt in places (blown up), and one of it's water wheels was reconstructed (also blown up). The city, in general, was very nice and made an excellent outpost to make journeys for the next two days.
On the first day we visited Assassin's Castle, and Night's Castle (Crac de Chevalier). Apparently the word assassin is the name of a Shiite clan that would roam the area finding and killing Sunni's. The castle was a nice fortress located high on a plain with nice defenses. The coolest things about castles here is they were continually deffended and attacked. Chris said that many of the coolest castles in England were never attacked so nobody knows how well they were designed or built. These things were attacked many times and even today they are still standing in really good condition.
Crac de chevalier was the most amazing castle I have ever seen. It was high on a hill, with a wall that was had only two entrances. The main entrance was followed by stables and defenses internally, while the secondary entrance was probably a service entrance that led into the main stores and kitchen areas. It was soo cool I just geeked out and took tons of pictures. Some pictures were of fossils and geodes in the actual foundation rocks. All around it was the coolest thing I have ever seen.
The second day we worked our way through Apomea (Sp?), and two of the many dead cities that are all over central Syria. Apomea would be Palmyra if it was never discovered. The ruins are just sitting in an open field with most of it's area not even dug up and studied. I guess it was a travel and trade center and it's columns stretch over a kilometer in length. There are many half dug ruins and many clay pipes laying about from what I would assume to be a massive water system. The area all around the main columns is farmed and plowed. Everywhere there is scattered clay pieces of destroyed history. Mounds that are grown over just waiting to be dug up and studied. It's sad to see such an amazing historical sight just getting wrecked with every pass of the plow. On the flip side, since nobody wants to come to Syria, most of the sights are amazingly in tact. There were locals there that dig through the plowed fields and ruins looking for things to sell foreigners. We were offered Greek, Roman, and Byzantium copper coins, silver coins, clay sculptures, and other antiquities that belonged in a museum and not some tourists pocket. I don't believe in taking things from ancient sights unless they are going to be preserved for the greater good. Maybe I will buy some things and donate them to a museum. The government doesn't put any money into tourism, if they did they would have a boom economy...just after they made some political reforms :)
The dead cities were also amazingly well kept with animals grazing in them and people living near, and sometimes in, the ancient ruins. Most were Roman or Byzantine cities that were abandoned after earthquakes or destroyed all together. They are an amazing example of period construction and planning. Again they should be cataloged and preserved not left to rot. In villages nearby random pieces of Roman columns have been used to build stone walls and other things. The rocks are scattered everywhere.
After being back at school for a day we were notified that Thursday was a half-day due to the government using buses and closing roads for people to come and demonstrate in a Pro-Syria rally downtown. We stayed and played basketball at school, and by the time we left to go home the roads had been blocked. We took a microbus the long way home getting off downtown right in the middle of the demonstration. An interesting mix of the different political groups and ages of support showed up for the demonstration. There were plenty of village kids in their early teens to early twenties. College men and women marching with flags of "God, Syria, Bashar, Baath" ...at least the order of importance isn't as scary as it could be. It was a very peaceful, well organized demonstration that had fluid movement of people coming and going. Chris and I figured today there were between five and ten thousand people in attendance, maybe more but not by much. The organized groups marched on the square, chanted and left. The villagers that had nothing better to do just hung around. In Syria they are the class equivelent of what the British call commoners and what Americans call hicks. To my observation the more educated younger people were in organized groups supporting an idea, and the villagers just showed up because it was something to do. After we got home and changed out of our sweaty clothes we went back and took a few pictures. Someone had hung a giant banner saying something like " we don't like Bosh, the American people are not the ruling administration." It was poorly worded and misspelled but you get the idea. I have a nice picture and will whip it out on anyone that wants to argue about Syrian people. We met some guys from one of the socialist groups and chatted with them for a while before we drew too much attention from the bored villagers and had our crowd broken up by the police. Actually it was amusing...in Arabic I aplogized to the police officer and Chris told him we were all friends. He looked at us like we were on crack and just backed away. After that we figured we should walk out, so we walked off through the park and went downtown for a while until the square could cool down. Everywhere you go you will find intelligent well spoken people with whom you can have a conversation with, and ignorant punks that have no respect or manners. Some of the villagers were tapping us on the shoulder while we were talking to the other guys and one jackass poked me in the ass (I guess 'cause my long hair). He did it again and I snatched his fingers up and nearly broke them in half. He cowarded down and hid as I stared down every person behind me with his twisted fingers held up and stared them down. Chris had a similar experience with some tapping and poking, and Ben was shuffled our of the circle within a few minutes. Chris and I decided that if we didn't stand up to those stupid fucks we wouldn't have been able to have the conversations we wanted with the people we wanted. All things considered we were in a square full of cops and army guys, but nonetheless I get pissed off anytime anyone shows an ignorant misjudgement in manners.
After drinking a few beers and deciding we were stupid, (Chris thought it was brilliant, but no one was poking him in the ass) we made our way home. That night, last night, I purchased my tickets to come home for nine days and it has been on my mind ever since. I fly home in almost a week and I am psyched to go there. I hope everyone fights mismannered punks in the same death defying dilligence that I have :) On that note I am going home to poke Chris in the ass!
posted by chris @ Friday, March 11, 2005
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