Damascus and Maaloula during the revolution

In September 2011 I flew into Syria from Iran, transferring in Sharjah, the capital of one of the emirates, on a dead cheap Air Arabiya flight. Our plane arrived in Damascus airport just before midnight and I was very glad that B was there to pick me up. B and two of his cousins, the bedouins of Palmyra who were now staying in Damascus which is where they go when they are not in Tadmur or sleeping  somewhere in the middle of the desert in the wind shade of a warm camel's back or inside a tent. I was always totally fascinated by his lifestyle, having visions of Jane Digby and her bedroll, listening to the sheikhs planning their next attack or negotiating over some stolen camels. B loved camels and the camels loved him. Now he was waiting for me in the lobby of Damascus airport, a fact that made me feel a huge deal safer than if I had gone there alone, as it was four months into the Syrian revolution.
I anxiously asked a young Syrian woman next to me if I could use her mobile to call them and begged her to tell the officers I was her friend in case they stopped and got suspicious of what I was going to do in Syria during the revolution. Indeed, I was the only non-Arab far and wide in this airport now, except for some Iranians who had arrived on the same flight. But alas, the immigration officer just leafed through my passport to the page of my visa, stamped it and waved me past him, barely looking at me.  Maybe he was tired, or maybe he thought I was one of those few foreign students and expats left in Damascus. He was not interested in checking me out at all. Or was it because I had devised a plan to fly in from Iran?
The young lady, a doctor fom Homs, smiled and waved, and was gone. And there they were, all three of them, waiting for me in the hall. I had not seen B for a whole year, and had not even been sure I would ever see him again.but I was invited to a wedding, an Arabic wedding, and that is why I came to Damascus.
We got in the car, I asked him to text my hotel that I was not coming. I had booked a room in my favourite house in the whole world, just in case something went wrong.
We drove down the airport road to the center of the city. The road that is now often blocked because of fighting and checkpoints. I wonder what it will look like when I go there again. Mezze has been bombed, Qadam has been bombed, the military airport has been attacked, even the international airport received a few bombs too. We were driving past that long wall on the right side, with the guards holding rifles, the wall that hides a number of military facilities.
Then through Mezze, and finally to an area where I had never been before, quite near to the old city but far enough away to need a taxi most of the time, far enough for me to not really know where we were, so I would be afraid to go out on my own, and moreover, where we went, was minutes away from the high rise modern building that belonged to the intelligence, in other words, the police. Maybe not a bad place to hide at all.
This is where they were staying and this was, where I now stayed too.
B and I ventured into the souq every day. He would be on the lookout for the mukhabarat, which I still did not know how to recognize . I could only tell that they were within earshot when he would suddenly changed the topic, and would start talking in a loud voice about sex,  mentioning sleepless nights full of passionate love making, something that was totally out of character for him, as B was usually a stoic, taciturn though fun loving man and he never once brought up this kind of talk when we were at his home. But surely, overhearing his words would embarrass any curious listener enough to not scrutinize us any further, and especially, which was the main purpose I suspect, explain our supposive relationship to the uninitiated observer from the police who might be wondering whether B was walking along here with a foreign journalist or spy and spilling the beans on Syrian politics and complaining about the government to her. It took me a while to figure out what he was doing, as he never mentioned or explained it to me, and instead always caught me off guard with this loud sexy talk in public ,  making me blush and squirm in embarrassment.My way of keeping a low profile was to instinctively never carry a camera, I did not take a single picture this week except during the Arabic wedding of a friend, and I purposely ignored all the fascinating treasures of Damascus, barely glanced at the minaret of the Umayyad mosque, blending in with the crowd and looking as if I had lived here for years.
 Once we sat in a cafe in the middle of the souk and he suddenly started looking me deeply in the eyes, his irises lighting up with green twinkles, , talked softly in a hoarse voice about " do you remember how hot it was when we..." while running his fingers over my knees under the table. I was mortified and nervously looking around in this place populated by muslims, veiled women, minutes away from the Great Umayyad mosque, I could not see anyone, but I am sure, a police officer in civilian clothes must have entered the cafe, observing us from a quiet corner. This is how a British journalist got himself arrested later, by editing his interviews in one of these cafes that were frequently checked by the mukhabarat.

But his device deterred any policemen from wanting to interrupted the hot erotic flirt we looked so intensely involved in.
When Friday came around, we stayed at home, sat side by side on the sofa, and he switched channels on the tv with the remote control til we could see the demonstrations going on in the suburbs of Damascus, and I pulled up my legs and huddled next to him, thanking the Gods that I was here in a safe place, nursing a cup of home brewed Arabic coffee with cardamom. We did not really go anywhere on Friday, just remained at home, in front of the tv, listened to music, smoked cigarettes and talked. And I wondered for how much longer Damascus center would stay this haven of peace.

The morning after I arrived, we all got up and gathered around the table in the living room. B said, he would go out and by bread and butter. I wanted to follow him and he shot me a sharp warning look and told me to stay. I winced and stayed where I was. I had long learned that one must never disobey an Arab when he is serious. We could be seen together walking in the souk but I guess, not around here. The reason was unknown to me but I knew better than to ask. 

After a few days I asked if we could go on a trip. I wanted to see more of Syria, spending my time well. I took out my map and looked at the roads leading out of Damascus. There was nothing much to the West of Damascus, we were close to the Lebanese border. The road north led to Homs which was out of the question. The refugees from Homs would soon flood into Damascus. The road east led into the desert, to Tadmur where B came from. I knew that there was nothing much in between but sand....and I certainly did not want to be attacked or kidnapped on the way...

I studied my copy of the Lonely Planet Syria . "How about Bosra?" I said. This was a place I had not seen yet,and my book described it's archaeological treasures. He said no, pointed his finger to the map. "Bosra is close to Daraa and they have problems, we cannot go there." I finally asked if a trip to Maaloula was possible, the legendary Christian mountain village north of Damascus where the people still spoke Aramaeic. He said ok. 

So after breakfast we were on our way out of Damascus . The taxi dropped us off at a bus terminal. We took the bus and headed north. The bus drove through the suburbs, the industrial area, and I saw a sign that said "Douma" and shuddered. I had made sure we would not have to pass directly through Douma. This was where the demonstrations were, the shootings on the street, the raids and the arrests. But Douma lay invisibly in an area off the road. Thank God. 

After an hour or two we arrived in Maaloula . The bus stopped on the side of a mountain. We got off and sauntered down the main road which lay deserted in the afternoon sun. I could hear Arabic music blaring from a speaker on the other side of the valley and we discovered later that there was a wedding going on. Men carried the groom on their shoulders while the street filled with wedding guests coming out of a mosque off the road.

We decided to see the village on the mountain first. We walked up the long turn of the sandy road and entered the village from one end. These were houses that had been glued to the mountain with concrete, each row higher than the last, with narrow winding alleys in between. But it was completely still,not a soul seemed to be there, no voices, no breath, nothing moved. We stumbled over the broken stones and rubble that lined the alleys between the tight rows of houses. Silence. "Where is everybody?" I asked B. He had no answer. We kept walking, careful not to get lost inside this labyrinth of small alleys. After we had passed through whole village we came to a gate which had some graffiti scribbled over the top, in blue paint. "What does it say? " I wanted to know,and B said laconically "Ma'assalaama" - "Goodbye". 

"That is not very helpful, isn't it?" I said in despair as I still did not now where we were. He shrugged his shoulders and walked on. 

After we came own from the mountain we came to a cafe. Nobody there but the host. B ordered a beer and I drank some juice, and he sat with his chin in both hands, elbows on the table, looking grim. It was one of those long moments of silence where he looked into the distance and it was impossible to know his thoughts, so typical for him. I thought of it as the pensive Bedouin look, lost motionless in silent brooding, eyes focused on something far away in the desert. Only this time his look was dark and grim , his eyebrows wrinkled in a frown. The host came out from the cool inside of the cafe and they had a long talk in Arabic, and B looked even more pensive and concerned. But he did that say a word to me about the contents of their conversation. Then we drank up, gave the host a few coins and  crossed the valley to the other side of the mountain. The music blaring from the speaker became louder and louder and here was where we found the wedding, half way up to the monastery, near a mosque . 

 This part of the village was inhabitated and there were a few souvenir shops, another cafe where I bought more juice to quench my thirst on this hot, dry afternoon in the glaring sun, and then we came to the monastery. Mar Thekla had a church, a chapel and a small mountain cave. A sign explained the story of how the girl Thekla, over a thousand years ago had escaped here from her pursuers which were Arabs trying to kill her, and the mountain had opened up and swallowed her and given her shelter so that she survived. "But that is good!" said B when I read the sign to him, and I felt surprised that he sympathized with an early Christian. But thinking about it now I knew that it was the perfect story to please someone during the revolution. B himself had an injury. He described it as a motorcycle accident where the bone in his leg had been crushed and cracked, below the knee. The doctor told him, it would take a year to heal. I wondered if B had escaped into the desert on a wild ride on his bike, during a shooting or arrest in Palmyra. I had no idea, and he did not tell, all I knew was that he bravely ignored the pain when we walked for a long distance.

We walked through the inner courtyard of the monastery. I looked at the well, and the signs on the old stone. Now at this time, all the nuns have been taken to another place, no one really knows where they are, to protect them from the fighting that even reached Maaloula. I hear that even the inside of this holy place has been damaged, by some people who do not want to understand what Syria is- a country where four or five religions used to live in peaceful coexistence for hundreds or thousands of years. I fear for this ancient church inside Mar Thekla which is named after the girl that disappeared inside he mountain. 

We entered the church. It was a dark Orthodox Church with ancient walls and dark gold frames shining dimly in the rays of sunlight entering the door. Here we met a nun, a young woman all clad in black, with broad hips under her long robe. She and B had a long talk in Arabic while I looked around. B had never been inside a church before as he was a Muslim , and he looked around in awe and said softly:" it is so different!" But it sounded as if he liked it. 

I myself had never seen B like this before. Standing inside a church,without his kefiyeh , looking around at the paintings hanging near the ceiling. The B I knew was an irreverent handsome man on horseback, his long lanky but muscular body hidden under a dishdasha, wide trousers and a vest with many pockets that held his Marlboros, keys and a mobile phone that would howl every so often in an Arabic tune. And I almost never saw his hair, always hidden under the scarf the bedouins wear. B was beautiful, and he looked like two different persons. Now we were standing together in this ancient church, and he was befriending a nun. I don't know what she told him. But I believe, it is the same nun that I saw in the video of the 12 nuns of Maaloula giving an interview telling the Internet viewers that they had been taken to a safer place at the end of 2013. 

I hope they will be back, and all will be as it was. I pray it will be so. 

Nobody has told me where B is now. I still think of him often and hope to see him alive, some time soon.