2nd Attempt to Turkey

            The last leg of the trip to the border was uneventful until my taxi driver almost beat me up.  He tried charging me 6 times the normal fare, as so an argument ensued.  This move had worked on me in my first couple days in Damascus, but I’ve learned my lessons since.  Taxi drivers in Syria are often the scum of the country, and pull this shit on foreigners, and occasionally Syrians, on a regular basis.  After 45 minutes of arguing in cave-man Arabic, I finally gave up when he started getting physical.  With a crowd already gathered around us, he started trying to push me back into the Taxi to “take me to the police.”  I pried him off of me and told him “no problem. Good. Call the police. I want the police too.”  “No, police not here!  Get in the car!  You are Ali Baba”  I had to think for a moment.  “Ali Baba?  Ali Baba and the forty thieves?  I think he’s calling me a thief.” I argued more, but when he started throwing around George Bush references, and pushing me around, I finally gave in to our negotiator (a nearby vendor) and paid an inflated price. 

            I cheered up when I got to the border and spent half an hour shareing candies and a bus bench with the Syrian guards and their Sheikh (sort of like a preist, but for Islam).  I then walked across the ¼ mile of no-man’s-land between the Syrian and Turkish border stations.  This path was a gravel road lined with razor wire and trilingual signs warning of the mine fields beyond (see pictures).  After buying a Turkish visa, I tagged along with a Portuguese and Turk on their way to Gaziantep (the Turkish city where my companions were).  My triumphant return was greeted with hugs from my friends and news that they had been betting whether or not I’d make it.  They sat me down on the bed, handed me a beer, and I re-told the same story I have shared up-until now. 

            That night we ended up in the grass outside of the town’s Ottoman castle, drinking whisky and Turkish beer with 5 locals for two hours.  After the cops came and kicked us out, we made our way back to their house where we continued the binge, and coupled it with a karaoke contest minus the microphone, karaoke machine, and accompanying music.  They started with a Turkish song, and we answered with “I would walk five-hundred miles,” and later, some Simon and Garfunkle.  There was something close to eight of us when the night ended, and we all squeezed into a Taxi which took us back to our hotel.  The Turks insisted on paying for the Taxi, and we all kissed each others’ cheeks goodbye and repeated their most popular phrase of the evening: “I love you Liverpool!” (They thought one of us was British).  That night, before my hotel room stopped spinning, I made the responsible decision to drink about 5 glasses of tap water to ensure a better tomorrow.  But my heart sank the next morning when I overheard my Australian friend teasing one of my other travel partners for almost drinking the tap water—apparently it’s unsafe to drink.  Sigh. 

            After a hefty lunch, we went to a park and lied around in the lush grass (something we lack in Syria).  There was a group of 6 children who came and joined us.  They were all under 6 years of age, no parents in sight, and survived by the coins they made by selling tissues and shoe-shins to the park-dwellers.  We didn’t bring any business their way, but shared our pistachios, juice, and shade for a good hour (see pictures).  Being with them was very bitter-sweet.  They were adorable, and very friendly.  But it was clear they had a hard life, and were not in school, nor going to be.  And here we were, lying next to them all sluggish from the night before when we spent more money on whisky and pisaciotes than they will on food in a month.  Thankfully, for our sake, the wonder inspired by the local museum of mosaics was a good distraction from this feeling of guilt.

            We moved onto another Turkish city where good ol’Abraham had spent a lot of his time, since his hometown was just down the block.  The sights were beautiful (see pictures), but the weather unbearablely hot—hence we spent our mid-day in an air-conditioned cinema watching the new Indiana Jones movie.

            Our final night in Turkey was spent in a small village on an eerie lake.  It was recently formed by a dam on the Euphrates River.  Like La Crosse, Wisconsin, the village was previously squeezed between the narrow river and the cliffs behind it.  However, since the dam, 70% of the village was swallowed rising water.  So at the lake shore, instead of a beach, you have underwater roads, sidewalks, houses, and a half-submerged Mosque (see pictures). 

            When we finally set out for our return to Syria, we bade farewell to our favorite friend Will, who was not returning to Damascus with us.  Instead, he thought it would be cooler to move to Budapest with his girlfriend (gay).  Before arriving safely at home, we spent a good 4 hours at the border waiting for our friend’s paper work to go through.  But instead of being a frustrating, mind-numbing wait, we had another adventure.  My travel companion Dania has the ability to charm strangers at the bat of an eye-lash.  So, we got to hang out with the General in his air conditioned office, drinking tea and watching Dr. Phil on cable.  When we asked him what he thought of the show, he said with a heavy accent, “I think maybe Dr. Phil… he need doctor.  But I love Oprah.”  Then we moved to the guards’ barracks, where one guard fed us his wife’s cooking and more tea while we witnessed the hilarity of Syrian bureaucracy at work from the behind the scenes (with a rack of AK-47s on the opposite wall).