Aleppo

I’ve been home from Syria for ten days, and pathetically, I have only written one blog post. I’ve been busy, you see – looking for a new apartment, catching up on work, being human…and absorbing. Since Prague, I haven’t traveled anywhere personally significant, and even Prague, even the city of a thousand spires, didn’t meet my expectations. Syria, on the other hand, exceeded them.

Of the cities I managed to visit, however, which were unfortunately quite few, Aleppo was my least favorite. Why, I still haven’t figured out. It was perhaps the similarities to Meknes; the meat hanging in butcher shop windows, the men welcoming me to Syria, the lack of women in the public sphere…

Before I go on, it’s probably worth mentioning the difficulty of going from one area of the Arab world to another with no real experience in between. From the Maghreb to the Levant is not a simple transition, you see. Many things look the same – the new parts of cities are almost identical; shop windows, signs, and even manner of dress are often very similar. The same language is spoken, for the most part the same religion practiced…but looks can be, and are, deceiving. Syria is a world away from Morocco but had you not spent significant time in one or the other, you might not notice how or why. I suppose in that sense I’m fortunate.

But Aleppo – you think you’re in Meknes but then you look up. And there it is, in all of its glory, towering above you, older than time, casting shadows over half of the city, just begging you to climb.

And climb we did…

There is so much to see from the top…

And from the bottom…

And the souqs – oh, the souqs!  Although I had been turned off by my initial few hours in the city, it redeemed itself with glorious soaps, beautiful cloths, and towering stacks of spices…

With a last walk through the souqs, it was straight through to a taxi, then onward to Tartous.  But lest you think Aleppo left a bad taste in my mouth, it did not.  In fact, when I think of Aleppo, I will always think of fresh cherry kebabs: