From Aleppo to Hama

Amman, Jordan

 

Tuesday morning, the girls all took off around 4.30am to catch their 5am bus to Turkey, while I headed out around 8am to catch my 9am bus bound for Hama. As the bus leaves leaves the outskirts of Aleppo, you pass another one of those great Arabic/English signs which simply reads "Aleppo thanks for visiting." Oh so close to being correct. The bus ride south lasts less then 2 hours and is rather uneventful as it travels along the main highway mostly the dry desert landscape dotted by farms and half-built towns. It continually amazes me how many half-built structures you come across in Syria. Either something is just being built or was never finished in the first place. In some cases, you see a new building going up right beside one that was clearly abandoned before it was finished. These aren't huge office buildings, just basic 2-3 story concrete brick or stone buildings. At times entire towns look abandoned, but then you notice signs of life like clothes drying on a line, domestic animals roaming in the back or some farm equipment nearby. And sadly, like most of Syria, there is litter everywhere along the road side and around each town. Just picking up the litter would make a world of difference, but I guess it's a cultural/poverty thing because the litter is simply everywhere. 

 

From the bus station in Hama, it's a quick taxi ride into the center of town to the Cairo Hotel, recommended by Lonely Planet as one of the best hostels in Syria (the Riad Hotel next door is supposed to be equally good). For me the hostel was rather sterile, clean, but almost too clean. For some reason I felt like being a real cheap ass and turned down a nice room with two beds, en suite bathroom and satellite TV (ironically, the 'standard' room) for something roughly 2$US (125 SP) cheaper, which turned out to be a bed in a narrow room that was outfitted with marble counter tops and a large sink. Clearly, this room used to be used for maintenance, laundry or something along those lines. After teaching the owner a little bit on how to send pictures via email, I headed out across the street to the main park for the city to check out these waterwheels...

 

Well, it turns out that for water wheels to be of any interest, at least to me, they require one key ingredient... Water. However, Hama didn't have any water flowing through it's river so the water wheels stood still, the river was more like a dried up canal and the main reason to come to Hama no longer was valid. So, I just sat down on a park bench and started to read a bit of my Lonely Planet.

 

It didn't take long for someone to approach me who was interested in speaking English to someone. Ok, fine, lets go, hit me with your English. Within seconds of this guy (who's name I no longer remember) sitting down, a second local literally came out of no way and asked me where I was from, but in French. Somewhat startled, I responded "Canada" to him and turned back around to continue speaking with the English guy. I figured the two must know each other but when I asked them how they knew each other, they simply looked at each other and said that they didn't. Strange, two people who don't know each other, speaking different second languages just happened to pick the same tourist to strike up a conversation with... Gotta love the Syrian hospitality!

 

(Honestly, this is a true story, I don't make this shit up!)

 

So French guy wasn't all that happy that I was trying to balance the conversation with the English guy and kept peppering me with questions and conversation. Since his French was better then the other guys English, he pretty much monopolized the conversation, much to the chagrin of the English student.

 

So French guy is now sitting on my left and English guy is on my right and I'm trying to balance the interests of both while not pissing off one or the other. For my sake, I'm more partial to speaking to the English guy because he was there first and obviously not as fluent as the other guy, so he's not getting in too many words. The conversation basically goes like this:

• French Guy asks question.
• I answer, then ask English guy a question
• While English guy is trying to answer, French guy asks another question.
• And so on...

Sadly, the French guy never left so the English guy sort of got short changed on this encounter. After about 30 minutes, I had to excuse myself because I was getting tired of having two different conversations, in two different languages with two different people sitting on either side of me. All of a sudden, those water wheels looked a lot more interesting and it was time to go photograph them...

 

Like just about every town in Syria, Hama has its own "citadel", though in Hama's case it's really just a huge man made hill in the middle of the city with a dilapidated and run down park at the top, there's no citadel anymore. (Well, there are some ruins that might be from a citadel, but I couldn't really tell and there was no sign that I saw describing them...) It's too bad the "park" at the top is in such terrible condition because it offers some pretty nice 360 degree views of the city and a pleasant escape from the traffic and noise down below. Maybe in the summer months it's in better condition but I doubt that all the tables, chairs and play equipments broke in just the last few weeks.

 

I spent some time wandering through the souq, which compared to the magnificent souqs in Istanbul and Aleppo left much to be desired, and also spent time wandering through the "old city", though most things were closed and the entire area had a really dead feel to it. People said Hama was way more laid back then Aleppo or Damascus, but this was pushing it for my taste.

 

At a kebap stand, I had a little disagreement with the owner over whether or not I had paid for my meal, which was a little awkward because I had paid, but how do you say that to someone who doesn't understand English. Turns out the confusion arose because I paid the guy carving the chicken outside, who then invited me inside, where I purchased some more food from the inside guy. When I went to leave, the inside guy (the owner) thought I had only paid for the fries he sold me and had not paid for the kebap. I tried to explain that I gave the outside guy money but he didn't seem to remember. I figured I was just getting screwed over (a whopping 35 US cents I might add) and was just about to give in when the outside guy turned kinda red and must have said something along the lines of "Oh shit, yeah, he did pay me..." The owner was clearly embarrassed and apologized in English, while some third guy just made the "he's retarded" sign while pointing at the forgetful carver. In the end it was all good and those three seemed to get a good laugh out of it, I laughed along for good measure, then headed to an internet cafe since the hostel, and Hama for that mater, were both dead.

 

At the internet cafe, I had the luxury of being beside the one computer terminal that apparently had a phone connection. You see, in the Middle East, one of the big things to do at internet cafes is to make phone calls over the internet, because it's orders of magnitude cheaper then using a land line or mobile. Well, the family beside me, who must have been calling relatives because each person spoke for like 5-10 minutes and each one started with the same view words (probably, "Hi, how are you? How are things?"), anyways, they were so loud it was insane. It could have been the connection, but my experience has been that on average, Arabic speakers simply speak loud. I don't think you can whisper Arabic, it's either spoken at slightly above normal, loud or louder levels. Combine that with speaking into a crummy computer microphone, with a connection over the internet to lord knows where and you've got a recipe for ringing ears. Oh, and of course they all had to huddle in and around my terminal since I was right beside them. So while I'm trying to do email and update the blog, I've got a family member yelling beside me in Arabic, and the rest of the family huddled right behind me waiting to speak. Needless to say I didn't get much accomplished that night online...

 

As for Hama, I'd only stay the one night because the following morning I was off for Palmyra, which is arguably Syria's main tourist attraction and probably at the top of Syria's "must see" list.

 

Kenny