You can’t just enter Syria if you’re an American. God forbid, that’d be too easy. We took a taxi to the border customs office, where we were promptly told to wait in the corner. And wait. And wait. We needed Syrian visas, and the immigration officer said we could either return to Lebanon or wait in the office until they deemed we’d waited long enough to deserve the visas. Five hours later, an officer saw us sitting in a corner, hunched over in the cold.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“We’re Americans,” I said.
He laughed. He spoke to a colleague and then said to us, “Wait one more hour.”
The magical hour passed, and suddenly it was like we were no longer lepers dangerous to the touch. The customs officer called us to the front of the room, asked for our passports, stamped them, and we entered Syria. Simple as that. A stamp and a wave, and we were in the kingdom of the Assad Family. Today ruled by Bashar al Assad, the son of Hafaz al Assad, Syria is ostensibly a democracy but more like a police state, aligned with Iran to the east and Hezbollah to the west and technically at a state of war with Israel since 1967.
It was now 11 p.m., dark and chilly. What were we to do? Our taxi had long since continued on to Damascus, and there was no bus service between the border and the capital 30 miles away. Fortunately, we’d already honed our hitchhiking skills in Lebanon. The next person to pass through customs was a 30-something businessman. He was alone, but he said he had three kids at home, so he seemed nice enough. In the car we got, me in the front passenger seat and Claire in the rear. We sped over smooth highways into the dark. A city appeared, the traffic became congested, and a moment later the man was insisting on dropping us directly at our hotel. Syria hardly seemed a sinister member of George W. Bush’s so-called “Axis of Evil.”
“Where from?” several Syrians—a schwarma seller in Damascus, a taxi driver in Hama—repeatedly asked.
“America,” I said.
“Bush, no good,” they said, shaking their heads.
“Obama OK?”
“Bush, Bush,” they muttered. “No good!”
“I like Obama,” said one restaurant manager in Hama. “Obama gives you space to talk.”
“Who do you like more,” I replied, “Obama or (Iranian President) Ahmadinejad?”
“This is different. This is a matter of one country (Israel) having a lot of power, and another country (Iran) wanting a little power. What’s wrong with that?”
“But who do you like more, Obama or Ahmadinejad?”
“I like them both!”
As was apparent from the conversation, U.S.-Syrian relations have thawed, somewhat, since Barack Obama took office. Until recently, Americans like us could not get a visa at the border. With renewed political talks, we can now visit the country and enjoy all it has to offer. For us, the best part was the food.
At a hole-in-the-wall in Damascus’s old town, down the cobblestone street from Umayad Mosque, a white-haired man always stands beside a vat of grease frying up fresh falafel while, inside, another middle-aged man with dyed black hair continually whips together fresh hummus and chick pea soup. It was the best falafel and hummus I’ve had. We followed it up with zesty babaghanouj at Al-Khawali, a restaurant set in an old Damascene house where Massachusetts Senator John Kerry once posed for a photograph that now hangs on the wall.
In Hama, to the north, we ate an excellent broasted chicken with fresh wedge-cut French fries and two big mounds of zesty yogurt and mustard. Hama is most famous for the dessert halawat al-jibn, a roll of stretchy cheese wrapped in dough, sliced and topped with pistachios and ice cream, and we found several cuddly old men serving fresh servings out of old world cafés.
My taste buds were in overload in Allepo, the country’s second-largest city, which is most known for its cuisine: cherry kebab, sujok (spicy sausage rolled in bread, all fried together), mouhamara (dip of walnuts, pomegranate molasses, roasted peppers, bread crumbs and spices), a creamy chick pea soup filled with tortilla wedges, and a sweet shop called Sonar with the best cherry, chocolate and coffee-flavored ice creams I’ve tasted outside the United States.
Between meals, we found time for Syria’s ancient sites. Damascus calls itself the world’s oldest continually inhabited city. Mixed with modern street shops are millennium-old mosques and two millennia-old Roman colonnades, and grander ruins dot all of Syria.
In Palmyra, not far from the border with Iraq, we walked through one of the world’s ‘most splendid’ Roman sites.
At Palmyra, we watched the limestone columns turn from yellow to pink to red as the sun set…
In the city of Bosra, about 10 miles north of the border with Jordan, we sat inside the world’s largest intact Roman theatre.
I lifted an ancient cannonball…
Nearby Hama, we spied Orthodox monks pacing at St. George Monastery…
And we climbed into the Crusader-built citadel of Krak des Chevaliers, which was said by Lawrence of Arabia to be “the finest castle in the world.”
George W. Bush said Syria is in the axis of evil. But how can a county that feels so right be wrong?
