Last few days in Syria
I left Syria a few days ago and I am in Beirut as I write this. Like I did in Jordan, I rented a car for 3 days in Syria to see sights that are hard to get to. I found a French freelance journalist named Antoine and an Australian couple (Alan and Kate) to share the trip with me. All of them have traveled much more than I have and we are all in our 30s, so we had a lot to talk about (and a lot of open road during which to talk).
Our first day we drove from Aleppo to a castle overlooking the Northern Euphrates (Qala’at Najm). We had tea with the caretaker Albert’s family and then continued on to another castle (Qala’at Ja’abar) on Lake Assad. We slept in a big tent behind the castle restaurant and woke up with a wonderful view. Alan and I even went swimming in the lake. In both cases someone had to unlock or lock up the castle for us as we were the only visitors at Najm and the last visitors at Ja’abar.
The second day we went to Halayibba (where Queen Zenobia fled from Palmyra), and Dura Europos which was a truly enormous city which predated the Romans. It was forcibly evacuated by the Persians in the 600s and wasn’t found until the mid 1900s. We spent the night in Dier ez-Zoor and got invited to join a couple (John and Stella) for dinner who are Chaldean Christians. They had a really interesting perspective and it was great talking with them.
Dura Europos is about 40km from the border with Iraq. The US military attacked a town just over the border in Syria just two days later, killing several civilians. I was never in any direct danger, but it doesn’t exactly make we look benign or even harmless as an American.
Finally, our last day, we went to the museum in Dier ez-Zoor. The musuem probably had the best explanation of the progression of civilization in the fertile crescent that I had ever seen. I was especially interested in the progression of phonetic alphabets. Finally we got on the road to Qasr al-Hier ash-Sharqi. This place is seriously out in the middle of nowhere–38 km on a dirt road. The caretaker didn’t even bother to unlock the place for us, he just handed me the key and asked us to bring the key back when we were done. We met a family of Beduins on vacation who hung out with us, made us tea, gave Kate an incredibly vampy makeover, and offered us chicken. Unfortunately we had to get on the road. I dropped the others off in Palmyra, then I continued on toward Hama.
By this point I was driving by myself and it was quite dark. I was making pretty good time, but I wasn’t on the good road yet. It started to rain. When I was almost to the good road I came down a hill and hit a monster puddle, hydroplaned for several seconds and ended up just off the road in water about mid-calf deep. I waved down a truck driver and together we pushed the car onto the road and I got it started. I had to bail out the driver footwell which was full of red mud water. The rest of the drive was uneventful, but I was wondering how I was going to explain this to the rental car company. I was still wondering the next morning as I drove into Aleppo, but I found a car wash and vacuumed the remaining water out and had the car looking good as new when I dropped it off.
Enough driving for this trip!
