Introduction

This is the daily diary of a two week visit to our son Matthew in Damascus. I am not naturally a traveller to foreign shores, preferring caravan holidays in the UK to hotels abroad. However, it is important to understand the lives your children lead so when we realised Matthew was to be in Syria for more than a year we knew we had to try to join him at some stage in order to understand his world and meet his friends. This account is purely personal and is likely to contain inaccuracies (not least in the names and spellings of his Arabic friends) so I apologise for those in advance. The diary was not designed to be a report, just a series of hooks on which memories could hang.

I would like to thank the people of Syria for inventing (among many other things) the concept of writing and being gracious enough not to claim intellectual property rights on the invention. It is arguably the most important invention in the entire history of the human race.

Image - the Cham Palace hotel at night. We stayed in a cheap and cheerful backpackers hostel but the Cham palace was a really useful landmark for orientation! Cham is a local name for Damascus.

Day 1 – Saturday 28 Mar 09 - Damascus

Arriving in a place where neither language nor literature is remotely familiar and culture is a world apart makes me realise afresh the raw courage Matthew had to come here as he did. It was two years ago to the day when his train from Istanbul arrived in Aleppo and he entered Syria knowing no-one, having nowhere to stay and no job to go to. I knew it took huge courage and faith (and required a certain amount of faith from the parents too!) but until you walk out the airport into the Big Unknown of a foreign culture it doesn't fully register.

Hotel al Rabie is our initial base - 3 nights booked to start with before going to Matts but we might stay here longer and maybe let Tim stay on his own with Matt to get some brother-time together .

Image - brothers together! 'Polo' looks awful but tastes amazing... mint and lemonade smoothie.

Day 2 – Sunday 29 Mar 09 - Damascus

Matt came here for breakfast then we walked up to the Citadel; passing a pitiful pet shop stall en-route. It was distressing seeing the conditions the animals were kept in. 12 hours later Tim would be speculating what he would do if he won a million pounds - "Buy all the animals and set them free". The souk was better than I remembered the souks of Tunisia - there was little being pestered by vendors and my sense of smell has dulled over the years -but I had the same feeling I get walking round the Swan centre at Eastleigh..."why would I ever want to buy THAT?".

The mosque of Umayaad was an unexpected experience in many ways. I was captivated by the beautiful serenity of the giant, white courtyard where the reflections seemed to root the sky down in the depths of the earth. But I was left cold and unmoved by the giant emptiness of the sanctuary area where the complete absence of a focal point made it feel as holy as an aircraft hanger. After the mosque we walked on through the Souk until intercepted by Farood who brought us into his shop and spoke to us in excellent English (acquired "in the University of Hamidaya Souk"). He was a great storyteller and ended up taking us round to his "Aladdin's Cave" down the Street where he had a room completely kitted in Islamic fashion from the ceiling panels to the wall hangings - part of the family business.

The afternoon was spent wandering round to find a restaurant and then exploring the delightful alleys of the old town. We were struck by the easy friendliness of the people. In Mexico I felt continually bombarded by street sellers and beggars; I felt I was an object of commercial opportunity rather than a human being. Here it is different. We are still approached by the street sellers but fewer approach and still fewer pester. We have had a number of greetings by complete strangers, merely for the sake of communication. We have also had shopkeepers ignore us while we browsed; something that made shopping a more pleasurable activity.

Image - the Umayaad Mosque - man reading newspaper, reflecting on the polished marble courtyard (top); building regulations in Old Damascus are a little lax (bottom).

Day3 – Monday 30 Mar 09 - Damascus

Matt joined us for breakfast then we walked up to his house, stopping at the juice shop en-route and drinking delicious freshly made smoothies in the park. Matt's roof garden has great potential and we are looking at getting a load of plants from the nursery to green it up. We got a taxi back to the Old City to visit the museum of Arabic Science and Medicine. Matthew went back to teach while Tim, Terry and I visited the botanic garden for lunch. The cheese and mint wrap was delicious and Tim got a giant ice cream but unfortunately I had to leave before I could offer to help him eat it.

I walked up to Matt's house to give the students a lesson on earthquake prediction. It was great teaching natural hazards again and there was quite a buzz as we got the students debating the ethics of predicting earthquakes and who you should tell! Matt and I then walked back to the hotel to pick up Tim and Terry for the final trip of the day - a pancake evening at Richard's house, half way up the steep northern rim of the city. The views from his balcony were breath taking but the conversation with Hannan and Madeline were tinged with poignancy as they recalled stories from their fathers childhoods when the city had green orchards and fields around it and a wide lush river flowing through the middle. Now the city is a huge, noisy and polluted sprawl; all the Islamic architecture and aesthetic swallowed in an ugly cancer of unplanned concrete.

I also enjoyed some fine conversation with Kate - the latter ranging from koranic literature and culture through to her exile from Khabul and her final return. I returned to our hotel feeling a glow of pride, that our son had surrounded himself with such a great group of people whose hearts and souls matched their intellects. Meanwhile, our youngest son (who had made us equally proud at the way he handled all the expectations) stayed over with his big brother, giving Terry and I the luxury of a little time together.

Images - view from Matt's roof terrace (top) and minarets at night (bottom).

Day 4 – Tue 31 Mar 09 - Damascus

We rose, breakfasted and walked up to join Matt & Tim. It was already very warm but the windless morning air was thick with pollution and we could scarcely see the hill beyond. I found it a labour to breathe; every breath constricted and tainted, like a homeopathic suffocation! After some time at Matt's we went to an Internet cafe and thence to Gabe and Teresas for a student's tea party in honour of Sally, a volunteer returning to England.

We saw Gabe, Theresa and Matthew in their element with the students. Matthew had set them the task of writing poems about food memories. His own was a memory of eating scones with Great Granny and Uncle David at Sidmouth. The poetry was funny, poignant and moving; several recalling rainy childhood days in Baghdad (memorable for their rarity) with faces pressed against the window as the smell of cooking and the chatter of family life mingled in the background. I spoke for a long time with Gabe. They are a rare couple. At a stage of life when most are drawing pensions and joining golf clubs they are learning Arabic, running the Iraqi Student Project and actively joining their convictions to their actions.

After the tea party we went shopping for a spare pair of trousers for me (having forgotten to pack any!), had a juice in the park then walked up to the Friday Market with Gabe, Theresa and the newly arrived Monica. The Friday Market is the market where Syrians go rather than tourists so it was full of useful everyday things rather than carpets, hangings and trinkets. Tim stayed with Matt and the students but we met together for a pizza before Terry and I returned to our hotel.

As we waited outside the pizza shop I played around with long exposures of night time street scenes. A group of young men were standing nearby watching. One came up to me offering me a share of his crisps and asking if I would like him to take the photo of me. His English was good and he explained he was a scout so England was important to him as the birth place of Baden Powell. I wonder how many English people could say Syria was important to them as the birth place of medicine, dentistry, literacy and mathematics?

Terry and I walked back a different way down narrow streets awash with cars and pavements used as parking lots. Drivers and pedestrians had a mutual disrespect with jaywalking as abundant as pavement parking. The bit neither of us enjoyed was crossing the main road, a kind ofdeath street consisting of three lines of traffic chaos where the accepted crossing technique is a suicidal saunter into the traffic streams. The slower you cross the safer it is said to be since they see you with enough time to take evasive action. It takes courage to put yourself entirely at the mercy of the vested self interests that would avoid a dented bonnet and thereby aim to miss. It took less courage, however, than the cyclist we saw riding in the dark with no lights the wrong way down a three lane one-way street packed full of evening traffic.

Terry and I were fairly tired when we got back so quickly fell asleep. I tossed and turned and dreamed of being stopped by the police for riding without lights. Waking, the room was airless and my lungs still felt violated. Breathing was a conscious act you had to be careful not to forget. I lay writing until the 4.30 am call for prayer rose and fell like a tide in the darkness and consciousness drifted at last on the outgoing ebb.

Images - Tim in his element at the tea party (top); long exposure image of traffic on 'death street' - hence the ghostly figure (bottom).

Day 5 – Wed 1 Apr 09 - Damascus

Woken late with a text from Matthew, we were clumsy and scratchy getting going but slightly revived by the obligatory olive, cheese, egg and bread breakfast and a brief conversation with Anita, a Norwegian of Arabic extraction reading at the table outside our room. When we got to Matt's Tim was tired and easily irritated but we got out to find a taxi and went to the botanic gardens for an ice cream together.

Tim has been fascinated by the ants there and he wasn't long looking at ants when he relaxed and came back to us with all sorts of tales about things he had observed. Matt left to take a lesson so we had a few hours to spend before meeting together to go to the ‘Cain and Abel’ mosque on te hilltop overlooking Damascus. We decided to pick our way to the Azam palace without using a map. Whilst I love maps the end purpose is always to get a map inside my head so it was a nice feeling to walk around the narrow lanes of the souk following only instinct - informed by sunlight and shadow - and end up at the right place.

Azam palace was an inspiration to me in a modest way. I loved the aesthetics of space, water, geometry and vegetation and I set myself a challenge to make any future home I lived in a place where the integration of beauty and nature was considered to be a worthy investment. I didn't see many of the palace exhibitions, choosing instead to spend a long time simply sitting soaking up the place and watching the people.

We walked up to Matt's in time to meet the students near the Islamic University for the ride up the hill. The minibuses in Damascus are mainly small and thin. There is a reason for this which you soon discover on the ride up through the steep narrow streets of the Kurdish settlements clinging to the sheer limestone slopes of the hillside. This is an area with many illegal houses and refugees with no official status. This might explain in part the higgledy piggledy nature of the housing. After my lesson on earthquake prediction I sincerely hope these people get a decent warning of the next earthquake here. I would not like to be on these slopes when it took place. The drivers took it all in their stride as clutches slipped and brakes squealed. The drivers know their vehicles to the nearest millimetre but it still seemed impossible that no-one collided or got run over.
Finally, we stopped when the road gave way to steps and we climbed a concrete stairway that zig zagged among a few remaining houses then launched several hundred metres across bare yellow limestone to the squat square form of the mosque near the hill top. We removed our shoes, the girls covered their heads and we walked through the sanctuary area to the cave behind. In the cool of the cave the Iman told us the story of Cain, Abel, jealousy and murder. We heard how the mountain itself gasped at the deed, and we saw the tongue and tonsils of the mountain frozen in open mouthed shock. Nearby we saw the hand print of the angel Gabriel on the cave roof, holding the mountain to keep it from crushing Cain and thereby wiping out the forebear of the human race. We were shown the Arabic name of God picked out by the random deposition and erosion of calcium on the cave roof. We heard the tale of the forty refugees who hid in the cave hundreds of years ago and are still (apparently) in there; whenever one dies another replaces them so they continue to live - a shadowy invisible presence - behind the bricked wall and three round window openings to the back of the cave where the faithful throw money and photographs of their loved ones.

All this we heard twice; once in the guttural arabic of the Iman and then a second time in the beautifully accented English of Maha (the "big eyes of the little deer") who translated for us. Many of the students prayed. Fouad explained to us that when you visit a house you give two greetings; one when you arrive and one when you depart. "So it should be when you visit God's house and that is why we pray twice when visiting a mosque". His little brother Osama (10) had joined us for the trip. Osama’s English was excellent and when we asked him how he spoke such good English he casually said ‘I picked it up playing computer games’. He had a wonderful smile which seemed to permanently light his face. That cheerful disposition might come in handy in later life. It could be tricky living in the US with the name Osama and a birthday on September 11th.

We left the mosque just as the evening call to prayer rose across the city. In the gathering gloom of the early evening, constellations of green light could be seen from the mosques across the city. Green is the colour most associated with Islam; not surprising that a culture with its roots in the desert should regard green as the colour of life and holiness. Each light was a focal point of sound as the call to prayer rang out. Up on the hill we heard the rumble of traffic drowned by wave on wave of incantation; sounds reaching back to ancient times before green neon lights or electric amplification. As the wave of prayer faded back to the drone of cars Matthew gathered the students in a story-telling circle and we passed around tea and biscuits in the dark. The stories flowed from Alla'adin to Leprechauns, the hanging gardens of Babylon and Sargon the Great.

Just before the stories began, while the tea was being poured, we had a phone call from Vivienne at the Halifax to say our offer on Mike's house had been accepted. Our own story seemed - at last - to be moving forward. It was an unbelievable thing; a house way beyond our expectation now within our grasp and a place big enough to allow space for new dreams and new adventures for us all. Above all it offered us more than a house. It offers a home big enough that hospitality can be practiced in tangible ways.

Images - The beautifully crafted arches of the Azam Palace (top); climbing up through the shanty town to the 'Cain and Abel' mosque (middle) and the illuminated stairway leading back down the hill towards Damascus (bottom).

Day 6 - Thursday 2nd April 09 - Damascus

This was the day we left the hotel. We made the most of the final shower, ate the last of the olive, yoghurt and bread breakfasts then arranged to store the luggage while we went to meet Matt and Tim at the handcraft market. We bought a couple of presents including a clock with Arabic numerals. There was a music shop selling Ouds, drums, whistles etc. The whistles were the cheapest and had a wonderful bagpipe drone so I bought a double set for 500sp. Terry and Tim were mortified and persuaded me to take them back and swap them for a drum. Secretly I would have preferred the drum but didn’t think I could justify the expense so their prejudices against my piping played to my benefit...

After a tasty restaurant lunch we collected the bags from the hotel. On the way we passed a bike converted for cooking crepes. Matthew told us he used to hear the vendor pedalling round advertising his wares in English by shouting loudly "Crap on a biiiike!”. I had forgotten how much I miss Matthew’s anecdotes and sparkly eyed humour.

We went by taxi to Matthew's where we met Laurence and Nour who accompanied us to the garden centre with the grand plan of greening Matthew's balcony. It was wonderful to walk round somewhere brimming with greenery. There were also a range of birds for sale including some big chickens cramped into tiny cages where they could scarcely turn around, far less stretch their wings. One cage had a dying bird lying on its side in the heat and flies. Tim and I took the cage to an assistant but we could not understand their reply so really didn't feel we had helped either the bird or our own conscience. Tim and I discussed whether we should secretly set the birds free or at least help their chance of escape by removing the stone from the top of the cage. But in true English fashion we ended up not making a fuss or causing embarrassment to us or anyone else.

We got a lift back with Laurence, Nour and Omar (who joined us at the garden centre). Carrying the plants up to the fourth floor was hard work but not as hard as carrying the soil - thankfully we didn't need to do that particular job as the friendly delivery man who does the roof garden for Laurence and Omar seemed quite willing to lug the bags up the stairs! We had tea with Laurence's family and I found out what a skilled and knowledgeable photographer Omar is. He is doing an MA in Vienna on a part time basis. I envied Nour who is growing up with his Dad speaking Arabic, his Mum speaking French and English liberally sprinkled as their social language with friends. He will end up knowing three languages without studying any. However, it seemed strange that a couple so cultured and well educated had decided to settle in a noisy polluted city and bring up a child there. The extent of my surprise suprised even me. It reflected deep seated prejudices; not against amascus, just about cities in general - I still find it inconceivable to choose to live in one. I know many people have few choices but I would sacrifice a lot for the joys of clean air and the song of birds.

I was very tired after tea and just wanted to sit down but Terry had realised she still had the key for the hotel room and I knew it was better to take it back sooner than later so I forced myself to walk back to the hotel to deliver it. As an incentive I took my camera with my new lens attached and gave myself the luxury of abundant time. Damascus seems busier in the evening than it is in the day and I walked slowly, choosing unfamiliar routes to broaden my knowledge of the city. On the way back I picked my way through the dark and narrow streets of souk Sarouja using the moon for navigation. It was a much longer route but being more interesting was less tiring. It also felt remarkably safe and it was with some confidence I explored the maze of little streets. I knew if I got lost I’d be unable to ask for directions but I didn’t expect to get lost. It wasn’t that I knew where I was, just that I was fairly sure I could end up in the right general area provided I walked far enough and could see the moon now and again. I spent a long time photographing a stray cat in a derelict building and an equally long time composing the moon behind the crescent on top of a mosque.

Walking through the city at night, with its bustle of activity I felt an invisible spectator, almost a ghost from another time or place, unable to communicate. I looked in on restaurants, recognising few of the foods and overhearing wholly incomprehensible conversations. There was an ambiguity in my invisibility. Part of it was appealing but part of it was alienating. I felt like a beggar must feel as people walk past avoiding eye contact; but then I realised that this was nothing to do with language barriers - I feel equally distant when walking through any English towns; if truth were known I feel an outsider in every group, sometimes even among my closest friends and family. It's something to do with not being a nuisance, not imposing on people but insecurity is only part of it. It’s also about the joy of solitude (mixed, no doubt, with a bit of pride and aloofness). The origins are dim and distant and the motivation mixed but I’ve learned to live with it happily enough … though it sometimes frustrates Terry.

When I got back to Matthew’s I was ready for bed and we were greatly blessed to find his flatmate, Kate, had tidied her room and changed her bedding so that we could sleep in her bed until she got back from Beirut.

Day 7 - Friday 3rd April 09 - Bosra

We got up fairly promptly in preparation for a long coach ride with Madeline, Nour and Sarah down to the amphitheatre at Bosra. We picked up Nour en-route with her little sister Dana. On the coach I sat next to a Syrian doctor. We spoke about many things including the Syrian education system. He told me that education was free but the required pass rate for exams was very high. On his course he needed 99.5% to pass! That makes the English examining system with its grade inflation, grade boundary acrobatics and target pass rates look distinctly Third World in comparison. After speaking to me in very good English he started speaking in German to a girl in the seat in front. Sometimes it seems only the English are incapable of mastering another language!

It was 2 hours on the coach, largely through flat fertile plains studded with olive groves and sprinkled with bedouin tents. We saw many shepherds leading their flocks along the edge of the dual carriage way and I saw one flock being grazed in the central reservation with cars going past at 70 mph in both directions. That requires a shepherd with either a high degree of confidence in his shepherding or a low degree of intelligence. Or possibly both.

When we arrived at Bosra we needed to check the return times and book a ticket. This got more complex than expected, not least because the guy who managed the bus bookings was desperate to get us to visit other places that afternoon in order to boost his business. The more we discussed it the more we became convinced we should visit one place well rather than several places badly. However there was an inordinate amount of discussion between the bus manager, Madeline, Matthew and Nour. After it was all settled and we booked our places Nour told us how she had taken her aside by the manager at one point who told her off - "you Arabs should have persuaded them to do the other trips!". I have to admit to having been impressed with Madeline; she has a lovely way with people, both in her voice and body language. She should work in sales and negotiation.

The amphitheatre was breathtaking in its scale, design and execution; it was almost disturbing to consider how such a monument could be conceived, planned, drawn, administered, procured and built in a pre- industrial society. It was a testament to the power of organisation, the achievement of willpower and the brutality of enslavement. As a slightly disorganised person who doesn’t like imposing my will on others I wasn’t quite sure which of those disturbed me most.
We got back at a reasonable time and Matthew got us a bean dish for supper followed by a very large and cream-laden fruit salad from the juice shop near the square. As I ate it I wondered if I would regret the indulgence. It wasn't very long before I knew the answer. Whether it was the fruit salad or something else I don't know but it was a very broken night.

Day 8 - Saturday 4th April 09 - Damascus

I've spent the morning in bed trying to encourage the stomach to discharge down wards instead of upward. Terry, Tim and Matthew have worked on the roof garden. I've listened to music, podcasts etc while waiting for the clock to crawl round to a time when my stomach would normalise. If only I could fast forward time – still at least it managed to coincide with what was already planned as a lazy day rather than a 3 hour coach trip through the desert or something equally vulnerable! Terry, Tim and Matthew planted and repotted the plants that were delivered the other day. Tim made some miniature mudhuts from soil he managed to divert from planting operations. What is it about children and dirt?

Day 9 - Sunday 5th April 09 - Damascus

We hoped to go to the Chaldean church this morning but although my stomach felt more stable I didn't feel confident to be sat for an hour without easy access to a toilet. Matthew was visiting his friend Ruham (who lives in his old house) so we decided a wander round old Damascus would be best since cafes would be available for emergency comfort breaks. Tim was tired and fed up that he couldn't stay at Matt's house to play with his Go-go Crazy Bone models on the mud huts he made yesterday. He decided to stay with Matthew and Ruham, leaving Terry and I some time to wander round together.

We decided to start by sneaking in the back of the Armenian Church’s Palm Sunday celebration. It seemed an informal (if not chaotic) affair. The courtyard outside the church was packed with families. Most had a small cross made from olive leaves pinned together onto a jacket lapel but the leafy cross appeared to be the only thing of any religious significance. The overall feel was more like a fashion show. Men were in smart jackets with gelled hair, children dressed up like page boys or bridesmaids and women looking like they'd fallen out the pages of a style magazine. This had nothing of Islamic modesty or propriety nor much of the Christian virtues of simplicity and moderation. Instead it seemed like a festival of cultural capitalism and individualism.

We had a sense that something interesting might eventually happen but in the end the fumes from the ubiquitous cigarettes and the overwhelming ostentatiousness drove us outside, back to the main street from which we decided to explore the chapel of Ananias. According to the Acts of the Apostles there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias. Rise and go to Straight Street, and inquire in the house of Judas for a man of Tarsus named Saul; for behold, he is praying and he has seen a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight." Ananias had an important and indeed courageous role in Saul’s conversion. It was a bit like German Jew being told to go to someone’s house and pray for a prominent Gestapo leader who is claiming he is now a Jew. It was extraordinary to climb down so many steps to the original street level and to realise that the present streets are a good 3 metres above the biblical level. No wonder it is so rare to see a ghost from Roman times - they are walking around deep underground, still following the paths they once remembered...

Day 10 – Monday 6th April 09 – Mar Mousa al-Habashi

I’m not out under the desert stars as I expected to be but lying in bed, writing by moonlight and trying to make sense of some contradictory emotions. We were up early to catch the bus with Gabe & Theresa's trip to the monastery at Mar Mousa. It was an hour's journey through a quite different kind of landscape with denuded hillsides, giant (and ugly) quarrying and occasional glimpses of hope in the form of modest conservation work here and there.

We arrived at the monastery entrance to find it is a long way from the actual monastery. A long winding path snaked up to the impressively impregnable monastery. I chatted to Gabe for much of the walk until he mentioned his guest Tom struggling to keep up. I had spoken to Tom on the coach – a doctor researching the effect of Uranium on the immune system. Tom was a big man and not as young as he once was so I guessed it could be a challenging walk. I had a walking pole which I hadn't unpacked so walked back down to see if Tom would like it. He was right on the edge of his limits but step by (hundreds of) step he eventually made it to the top. We were, naturally, late arriving so the others had all been already oriented. I didn't know where Terry, Matt or Tim were so went for a half hour walk up the wadi. It was deeply refreshing to hear silence and to see no sign of human activity but I was also aware that the others might be wondering where I was so felt I ought to get back quickly.

That feeling of never quite relaxing because I didn't know people's plans or expectations became a depressingly familiar theme. It was worsened by Terry and I being separated – being a monastery it is the custom for separate men and women's quarters - so there was not even the benefit of a joint base where we might discuss plans. I had been looking toward to the monastery visit for so long and spoken to my friends about my desire to have time on my own out in the desert, under the stars, yet my overriding memory was the tantalising frustration of being close to the possibility of peace but too busy worrying about the logistics to enjoy it.

Terry, Tim and I had a good walk up the wadi which I really enjoyed and the accomodation was a wonderful room for us three men, especially with the moonlight spilling in whilst I read to Tim by torchlight. Tim enjoyed the dogs and working out the pack order. Matthew was sleeping when I took Tim up for bed and he disappeared out early next morning without saying anything so I don't know what he enjoyed but I think it was peaceful for him and he liked the cheesemaking and Father Paolo (possibly in reverse order).

I missed Terry last night. It seemed strange to be apart in the same place but not to share the same room. She knew I wasn't relaxed but I didn't want it to spoil her time. If anything this could be a bit of special freedom for her since Tim was up in the men's quarters with me. I tried to send her a text to say ''don't worry, I'm enjoying the moonlight through the windows!" but there was no signal at all. Although the day gave me but little of what I had hoped for, the little I had was still important. Father Paulo rebuilt the monastery as part of a calling to bridge the Christian and Islamic cultures. We had the privilege of sitting in on an interview he gave Brian from the U.S. Catholic Today magazine. There were many things he spoke about and I would have liked to probe him further on some but one of the top 3 priorities he described was hospitality; a theme we often return to in our hopes and prayers about the house move. It seems strange, after the excitement of the chain linking together, to be still over here with life still ticking on. It feels unreal that there is a substantial amount of work to do and an unrecognisable life change coming up fast. It will affect work, family, friends, recreation and - we pray - opportunities for hospitality.

At some point between Father Paolo's talk and putting Tim to bed something changed for me. I still don't know what it was but the ingredients were diverse ranging from a sense of alienation (due to my poor language skills) through to a sense of exploitation (some guests playing the system for a free ride) and a sense of compromise - that the professed goal of the place (Muslim and Christian unity) would be achieved only through compromising the authenticity of each.

Father Paolo was clear that the distinctiveness of each was the gift to the other. But that didn't stop the shadow of doubt and the sense that the humility that comes from a whole hearted giving of oneself to God might do more for both unity and humanity than the quest for unity and humanity itself. However, when people ‘wholeheartedly give themselves to God’ it is sometimes accompanied by the desire to control others rather than serve them. When people grow old they often become more extreme forms of what they were when they were younger. The wingeing become cantankerous; the gentle become wise and gracious. Sometimes religious fervour can have the same effect on people. It might explain the differences between a Cromwell and a Francis of Assisi; both claiming the same inspiration but going about it in different ways.

However, much seems to depend on the direction of the influence. Those who take themselves before God to change the world are more unpredictable than those who take themselves before God to be changed. I hope the fullness of time will place me in the latter category, though there are plenty of things in the world I would be happy to see changed and plenty of opinions I could muster about them.

Day 11 – Tuesday 7th April 09 – Mar Mousa monastery and Krac de Chevalier

A long sleep but broken by being on the chilly side of comfort. I can't complain though because a sleep with many breaks is a sleep with many dreams, passing through the REM stage more often. I am very partial to my dreams. Nonetheless, after the sixth or seventh episode I got up early to go to the monastery chapel for a time of meditative prayer. I took some photos in the empty chapel then joined Terry & Tim for the communal breakfast - flat bread, goat’s cheese, goat’s yoghurt and apricot jam. The perennial flies were competing for the food and occasionally an over-adventurous one accidentally became part of the nutrition.

After breakfast I washed the dishes as a contribution to the community. Little things like practically helping or talking with Jan and Alain over breakfast and Steph in the kitchen dripped away at the isolation I'd felt so acutely yesterday. Maybe the answer to our fractured communities and broken society is as simple as washing up and a communal breakfast. Tim has been out of his comfort zone and generally handling it well but this morning he didn't and I bore the brunt of it so the long walk to the monastery gate was less than relaxing. At least I had Terry to walk by me and be her usual gentle and wise influence. Tim walked a long way behind but he had Matthew to do the same for him.

The taxi picked us up and took us to Homs where we would bus across town to the place to catch the Service minibus to Krac de Chevalier. The journey from the monastery to Homs was deeply depressing. The parched landscape could have had an austere beauty but everywhere I looked the land was littered with plastic bags and bottles. There are - apparently - two landfill sites nearby and the combination of strong seasonal winds and poor landfill management results in a plastic pox infecting every surface. Even up in the mountains where we had walked the day before we completely filled a plastic bag with assorted rubbish after an hour's gentle stroll. Laurence asks her students the rhetorical question “what is the main crop in the fields around Damascus?” to which her answer is Plastic Bags. But her students don’t even recognise the litter.

I cannot understand this mentality. I have a very strong sense of myself as a child of the earth, borrowing from a generous but fragile parent who needs my care as much as I need theirs. When I look or the quarry-scarred hillsides, the ugly concrete sprawls, the emasculated rivers chained to their concrete courses and the rubbish strewn landscapes something close to pain grips me. This is not a child suckling at the breasts of mother earth, this is a monster tearing the flesh and sucking the blood from a sick mother. But it is not just a Syrian monster - so many multi nationals have operations in developing countries precisely so they can benefit from lax labour and environmental laws. Until the price of a commodity reflects its cost to the environment the future looks very bleak. If a generation could take class-action litigation against another generation our children and grandchildren would sue us for the way we are bankrupting their health, wealth and wellbeing.

The bus across town was like any English bus but the passengers were far from English because they were friendly. We were standing initially but wherever a seat became free one of us was ushered to it by the other passengers. Terry had several young men practising their English greetings with her and one guy gave her a handful of sweets for us all as he got off. It’s not like that when an overseas traveller gets on the 07.31 Cross Country train to Birmingham but I shall try to be more aware in the future. The bus took us to the western bus station where we found the service we needed to take us from Homs to Krac de Chevalier.

Travelling in the Service is an experience - any British concept of health and safety has to be left at home as a 12 seater Suzuki minibus is adapted to carry 21 people and driven by a man who can make phone calls and give fare change simutaneously at 70 mph whilst overtaking trucks. We arrived at the Krac in one piece but our concepts of health and safety were about to get their second challenge of the day.

We have belonged to English Heritage for years but never visited anything as complex, vast or labyrinthine as Krac de Chevaliers. The excitement was compounded by the fact that nothing was out of bounds, no matter how dark the stairwell, how deep the drop, how strong the wind or how absent the safety barriers. Tim and I followed a dark stairwell about 30 metres down beneath the hammam (baths) by torchlight until we came to a rubble filled doorway. It was like caving indoors and we half expected to find a decomposed Knight at any point. Terry hated the high bits (where Tim was keenest to go) and the strong winds added to the excitement.

After we were safely down again I spent a lot of time in dimly lit, high vaulted rooms blessing my wife's decision to buy me a good digital SLR for my 50th and blessing my decision to buy a cheap infra red remote release to go with it. Long exposures just give such better images than flash. While we were sightseeing Matthew went off to find a hotel for the night - St George’s hotel in the nearby village. It was undergoing major restoration work so there were very few guests and very good rates if you didn’t mind the building site feel to the place. The rooms were nice and the service was good but it was a cold night again so this time I made sure I wore more layers. REM sleep may be fun but actual sleep is useful too.

Day 12 – Wednesday 8th April 09 – Krac de Chevalier to Palmyra

Breakfast on the balcony was competing with cartoons for Tim so he didn't eat much and was not happy about the thought of a 3 km walk up several hundred feet to Krac de Chevalier so there was a bit of negotiating and posturing going on but the breakfast was good – pizza-like savouries rather than the ubiquitous olive. Tim was genuinely tired and it was a long walk but Matthew did the normal big brother things that make a little brother laugh and forget their tiredness for a while.

This was our first experience of a spring time for a year. The river was as depressing as the Barada in Damascus (except it had less water than the Barada and more rubbish) but walking up the hillside was a joy. The olive groves were rich, clean and green, brimming with spring flowers. The contrast between the beautifully tended terraces and the ugly, litter strewn villages couldn't be greater. It is extraordinary how a culture that can farm these steep hillsides for over a millenium and create a beautiful landscape in the process is unable to create beautiful towns and villages where nature is embraced.

On the 3 km walk we had people stop twice to offer us a lift – typical of the Syrian hospitality. The second one was very near the top but we had the steepest and hardest to navigate bit coming up so we we accepted, squeezing the four of us into the back of the car. The driver told us about himself and his family in tentative, slightly rusty English, helped by Matthew’s Arabic. They were Christians (as were most people in the area) but the village around Krac de Chevalier was Moslem, having arrived with the Moslem occupation of the castle. He spoke about the events of history as if the present extended back a thousand years and talked of an uncle who had been a mason on the original castle as if he dimly remembered him from a medieval childhood. For communities as transient as those in the west, such roots take some getting your head round. Only been here five centuries? No wonder you’re not properly accepted as a local...

When he dropped us off by Krac de Chevalier we had some time to wait for the service to Homs. The plan was to take the minibus to Homs then catch a coach from there to Palmyra. We went into the café while a local worthy complete with Arab costume and crutches acted as an unofficial lookout for us. The service arrived (and we were duly informed by our spy) but the driver was vague about when he might leave...they like a full complement of passengers because it pays more. He offered us a special rate to leave straight away - a rate that would fall if we picked up extra passengers en-route. We were anxious to get going (and by English standards it was still extremely cheap) so we had a personal service with the comfort of space and the convenience of toilet or photograph stops whenever we wanted.

After 20 minutes driving and chatting with Matthew he offered us another rate for the full journey past Homs to our final destination at Palmyra. He was one of the safest drivers we had experienced and the thought of a comfortable unstressed journey was too appealing to be able to resist. Consequently we arrived in Palmyra in very good time feeling quite refreshed. This was just as well really because it is not the sort of place it is easy to relax in. This was the one place in the whole of Syria where I felt hassled and pressurised. We paid to go in the museum and I made the mistake of letting one of the museum staff talk to me about an exhibit I was looking at. He stuck to me like a limpet, describing each of the exhibits then taking me on to the next, even when I didn’t want to go. It was only when we left the museum and Matthew said ‘What are you going to pay him?’ that I realised he was standing with his hand outstretched and a pleading look in his eye. I had assumed I was humouring an over-zealous curator rather than employing a guide; I was wrong. But the pestering was only beginning.

Even Matthew who is so accomplished at dealing with such things ended up giving away spare pastries from breakfast and attracting an animated queue of potential beneficiaries. One of the guys insisted on having us all go round for tea to meet his family. I heard the argument raging in Arabic and assumed it was to do with pressurising us for a camel ride. I suggested to Terry that we just walk away because at least it gave Matthew the chance to say -''I have to follow my parents". When I later found they were responding to the gift of food by offering hospitality I felt ashamed of my clumsy western cynicism...but not entirely. Had Matthew been on his own I suspect he would have risked the adventure but with an entourage of non-arabic speaking parents and a tired little brother to protect he could foresee awkwardness at best and exploitation at worst. The sun was setting, the tourists were leaving and Matthew at last was able to wrestle himself from the hospitality offers.

The others went back to the hotel but I stayed out longer, wanting to get more photos. The ruins at Palmyra are unbelievable in scale and extent so it was not difficult to avoid the few remaining vendors. I thought I had succeeded and was setting up a long exposure shot to catch the moon rising over the ruins when I heard a familiar phrase "Hello. Welcome to Syria". In Damascus those words can be taken at face value and we were often blessed by their sincerity but in Palmyra they were a bad omen and presaged an argument guaranteed to make you feel mean and despicable for not purchasing something you neither wanted nor needed.

Meeting Hanni out in the ruins was an unsettling experience for many reasons. A young guy - probably the age of my older sons - he spoke good English and was riding a beautifully adorned camel. He claimed to speak seven languages, all picked up from the tourists. Whether this was true or not I don't know but it was evident there was a keen and shrewd intelligence here. He got down off his camel and sat on the ground while I phoned Matthew (at Hanni's insistence) to see if a sunrise camel ride featured in tomorrow's plans. It didn't. Hanni reluctantly accepted this and continued sitting on the sand as I asked him about his languages, his camel and his family.

I admire intelligence and having the opportunity for an authentic conversation with a bright young local was appealing until I realised he wasn't interested in a meeting of minds, only a parting of money. "I have 10 dollars" he said, "but I cannot get to the bank to change them to Syrian pounds because I cannot leave the camel. You can give me 600 Syrian pounds and I will give you the 10 dollars". I knew little about the exchange rates but it was clear this transaction was designed to benefit one person only. We had limited Syrian currency anyway but more to the point, I had no intention of getting out my wallet in front of a complete stranger in the middle of the now deserted ruins.

"I have no money with me, my son has the money back at the hotel" I said. He was unconvinced and I hated myself for lying. "Which hotel are you staying in" he asked. I said I couldn't remember the name because my son had done all the booking (and I had no intention of trying to remember either). His tone was becoming more annoyed the more he realised I had no intention of parting with money. He complained that I was unwilling to help him and then offered me a camel ride back across the ruins to the town. I wanted to walk (after all I was only out in the ruins to take photos, not ride camels) but he insisted he could take me directly to the hotel for only 200 sp. I reminded him I had no money and he reminded me that my son had money at the hotel so I could pay when we got there. At last I realised that a polite and friendly end to this conversation was slipping out of my grasp and I just needed to get up and go. He offered a camel ride for the family tomorrow – what time did I want to meet him. I said I didn’t know since it was my son planning tomorrow’s activities but promised that if Tim wanted another camel ride I’d look for Hanni and give him first refusal. At last he left me alone, muttering something incomprehensible which might have been aimed at the camel or me.

I was disturbed by the meeting. It was unadulterated scheming under the guise of friendliness and that annoyed me but I also felt annoyed at myself for resorting to barefaced lies in terms of whether I had money on me or not. Speaking to Matthew about it afterwards was somewhat reassuring. He had no scruples about it. ‘The guy was completely out of order. He was pestering you and trying to make you feel guilty. Don’t’. It was good advice but I still couldn’t help wondering what I’d be like if I lived on very limited means and my income depended on persuading people much richer than me to part with their money.

For Tim the highlights of Palmyra were the camel ride and the ants. While we were looking round the hugely over-rated Temple of Bel, Tim had a wonderful time building an ant enclosure for a group of foraging ants then watching them as they dragged odd bits of grass and seeds down underground. But another highlight was about to come..

Day 13 – Thursday 9th April 09 – Palmyra to Damascus

We rose at 5.30 to catch the morning light over The Valley of Tombs. It was a lovely light and a great time out together. Tim & Matt had lots of fun doing things that would be banned anywhere else like climbing multi- storey tomb towers with broken and incomplete stone staircases and looking into graves where hundreds of human remains still lay - mostly of children and young people. I found this very moving and wrote a reflection on the experience.

We built a mini-cairn on a rock and tried to take turns to knock it over. Matthew perfected a Neanderthal lob complete with obligatory grunt. It was a ‘Not Very Accurate Technique’ and helped us understand why the Neanderthals might have died out. It also reminded use how much I miss Matthew's humour which ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous and is so often a wonderfully healing gift for Tim when he is feeling overwhelmed.

The hotel breakfast was on the meagre side so we asked for some more bread. A single flatbread was cut up and brought over by hand (no plate or serviette). I hoped his hands were clean. When I saw him a few minutes later with his finger deep inside his nostril I decided it was probably a faint hope.

After breakfast we got a taxi to the bus station. There was a new bus service that went directly to Damascus without stopping and it went from an otherwise indistinguishable café so the taxi driver dropped us there and we waited till the coach came. The journey was uneventful for the first 10 miles into the desert then the coach broke down. It wasn’t reassuring to see the driver look despairingly through lockers trying to find any kind of tool. He failed. Some people got out to look at the engine and will it back to life but apart from the enjoyment of speculation the will power technique was unsuccessful. At some point the driver managed to flag down another bus and borrow their tools. I wandered off the roadside to look for arrowheads and axes in the abundance of flint on the desert surface. After 30 or 40 minutes the engine roared back to life and everyone piled back in. I regarded the whole breakdown with a frisson of excitement - some kind of death defying adventure with the possibility of being stranded in the desert hallucinating over imaginary water holes but I was speaking to Madeline later and she breezily said ‘Oh the coaches regularly break down in the desert – I’ve rarely caught one that didn’t’.

It was a very long day having been up since 5.30 but we knew we had not yet met Marzan, Matthew's Arabic teacher who had been instrumental in putting him in ontact with Gabe and Theresa. When Matthew phoned him he insisted he cook something for us that evening so despite the long day and a tired Tim we set off across Damascus for a late evening meal. It seemed the sort of house where there was some unwritten rule about eating alone and before long there were 9 people round the table. Fortunately for us English was the common language of communication and conversations ranged far and wide from the health (or otherwise) of Middle Eastern rivers to the nature of Palestinian identity and the mythological creatures in Arabic storytelling... all lubricated with excellent food.

Day 14 – Friday 10th April 09 – Damascus

A quiet day – Kate went off early for a long walk but the rest of us were lazy and had a leisurely breakfast with Lawrence, Nour and Omar. They brought some delicious French cheese and apricot biscuits. Tim and Nour had a great time playing together. Later we went back down to Old Damascus for the souvenir shopping and then had an Indian meal out in the early evening. We got to the flat and Kate got back from her walk; then Madeline popped in to say goodbye and present us with a book of old photos of Damascus. It was odd – we had only been there a few days but it felt like we had known some of these people for years. We took the last of our photos and gave Kate and Madeline our email addresses.

There was yet the adventure of the return home – the ridiculous bureaucracy of a Syrian airport and the extortionate tax for leaving the country (only payable in Syrian Pounds – and no cash machine in the airport so if - like us - you underestimated how much you need you are really stuffed!). There was the wonderful efficiency of Heathrow and the National Express bus service and the byzantine inefficiency of the Winchester bus services. There was the weather – cool, cloudy, damp air but wonderfully clean to the taste. There was the joy of getting back to trees unfurling leaves and flowers unfurling petals. We will miss Matthew and our new found friends but I hope we will carry something of the hospitality of the people and the richness of the heritage into our own futures.