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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment