Brian took us past mural after mural, to many a garden of remembrance and to a Catholic graveyard, fallen Republicans among its tenants. He showed us a fence, about eight metres high, that separates Shankill and the Falls. The interleading road is blocked by a gate, razor wire stacked thick on the top, closed for most of the night, every night.
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>>
