The man with the dirty keffiyeh, whose name I never learnt, drove in the middle of the road, often, when night came, with the headlights off. His right hand was always occupied, either by a cigarette or mobile phone. He accelerated past signs which suggested, in English and Arabic, that he slow down, and let the vehicle’s enormous weight carry us with little control down long, whistling slopes.
Aleppo, Syria
I woke as we neared the Syrian border, my left cheek clammy and wrinkled. Saliva had collected on the headrest of my reclined bus seat, and gone cold. I rubbed life back into rubbery skin, and looked outside. The land was drier than yesterday, when I had watched the sun set over central Turkey through the same window. Olive trees clung to brittle soil, their roots shabbily exposed. Adding theirs to other muted greens, they pushed a withered face above the ground’s gradual undulations.
At immigration, Claire and I – the only tourists on our Syrian owned bus – were treated with suspicion. A man sporting dirty fatigues and an oily black moustache examined my passport, close to his nose at first, and then, after slowly extending his arms, from a great distance. He punched something into the computer before him, eyelids narrowing over already strained eyeballs, and hailed a superior.
“France?” the superior asked.
“No, South Africa,” I replied. The superior gestured dismissively to his underling. The underling, his still narrowing eyes now almost completely shut, started to type, hitting the keys with undisguised aggression.
“Germany?” the superior pleaded, when this fresh attempt to persuade the computer of my nationality failed.
“No, South Africa,” I repeated slowly, exaggerating the syllables.
The underling bashed more keys.
“Where Place of Issue?” the superior barked, now angry.
“The Department of Home Affairs.” My voice was tinged with irritation, which disguised the beginnings of concern.
“No! Where place of issue?”
“The Department of Home Affairs.” South African passports do not actually mention a Place of Issue. They refer, instead, to an Authority, and mine, as my passport clearly stated, was issued under the authority of the Department of Home Affairs. But this answer was obviously unacceptable. “In Pretoria!” I added, guessing the bureaucratic difficulty.
The muscles around the underling’s eyes relaxed after a few brutal keystrokes. He wrote six cryptic letters on page one of my passport, above the South African President’s request that I be allowed to “pass freely without let or hindrance”, and grudgingly welcomed us into Syria. Continue reading Aleppo, Syria>>
Cappadocia
The bedroom was icy. Fresh breaths of arctic air sifted through unseen cracks, under the door, through the glass. My foot lay exposed. I snuck it back under the weight of blankets piled on top of me: three of them, thick and soft.
A steel cylinder stood in the corner of the room, stuffed with newspaper. A fire, waiting to be lit. It would have to wait. Behind the curtains lay another land: a land of eerie undulations in the earth, pointed stone chambers, forgotten homes. Giant cones of volcanic tuff congregated in clusters, watching over this frozen village, Göreme.
Waking up amidst this landscape had the surreal quality of a dream, or a nightmare. The view from our window was alien. I felt elated, but disengaged from recognised reality. Our rented room was barren and old fashioned. It could have existed in any era, anywhere.
Bluish mountains lined the landscape out of our window. These alone were familiar. No modernisation or signs of life were evident. Sand dune shapes flowed into the distance, shrubbery growing atop them. Soft and sandy looking, these dunes were solid, composed of solidified volcanic ash, or tuff. Giant cones of the same brittle substance, some topped with basalt caps, protruded from the terrain, silent. After the eruptions of nearby Mt Erciyes and Mt Hasan about three million years ago, centuries of rain and erosion have weathered this soft volcanic landscape into the mysterious stone folds and outcrops that are Cappadocia. Continue reading Cappadocia>>
Gosh, Prayers and Broken Windows
My mother and Willie Turnbull, the author of this article, joined me for a week in Turkey while Claire was away, attending her mother’s wedding. I forced our swift schedule on them; they forced relief from The Budget on me. Willie offered to write this article. I gleefully accepted, but insisted that the title be “Gosh, Prayers and Broken Windows.” “Gosh” because Willie – who hadn’t, like me, been travelling for months – used the word (perhaps too often) to express his newfound wonder. The “Prayers and Broken Windows” had more to do with Willie being Scottish, and await his explanation.
Lying in bed, awakened by the familiar 6am call to prayer, I enjoyed the sun shining through the gap in the curtain and the fresh breeze coming in through the front window. It eased the rather tight feeling in my head and gave relief to a mouth that felt like a drain. Continue reading Gosh, Prayers and Broken Windows>>
