Olive Trees and Burls and a Bowl and a Spoon – Syrian Labors (Neil)

My language ability keeps me from being able to communicate the ideas that I would like to, and thus I am assumed to be the maturity level of my language – namely a babbling toddler. It is the great frustration of being in a country where I am not fluent.

I voiced to someone that I wanted to work with a farmer for a day – I had visions of sheep and livestock, but ended up out at the olive orchard. The 10 workers shaking down the trees were all women, while the 3 men seemed set themselves to daily prayers, tea drinking and talking – interspersed with bouts of driving the pickup around. Actually for the men was reserved some difficult of removing burled and old root masses from the trees to allow new roots to grow and bring in water for the tree. The owner of the orchard, Abdul Rachman, had just had a surgery in Jordan, and the other man was lazy or tired and taking it easy by the time I reached there. So I had plenty of opportunity to swing the sledge and work my hands raw. Towards the end of my 2 hours there, we ate and my ride declared it was time to head back. I decided that I would go back the next day and take Yvette with me as there is something very connecting to a place about working in it. I took one of the burls with me to remember the experience and perhaps make into a bowl or sculpture.

The next day I did return and brought food for the crew – that was a fun shopping experience. I also developed an appreciation (through the lack of one) of a balanced sledge hammer with a straight and smooth handle that doesn’t twist in ones hands. I was a fine mess by the time the big burly worker arrived with calluses the thickness of my hands, but now 1 month on my hands have returned to their untoughened selves... while the connections formed by work remain strong and vivid.

The olive wood burl had grown over the last 150 years, and having hacked it out of the earth I saw the beauty in its twists and turns and gnarls. It takes time to appreciate this type of beauty – it is the beauty of working hands, of fisherman faces shaped by a life of facing into the saltwater and sun, it is found in the patina of Italian stones taking their knocks since antiquity.

As we neared the end of our Syrian sojourn, we finally met our neighbor - the artist who had painted our room and restored much of our house. His house was lovely with carved plaster work, paintings, calligraphy, a stalactite decoration commom since the Syrian Ayyubid era, a 16 meter deep well and well chosen artifacts, textiles and art pieces adorning the walls and niches … We had tried to look at this home before, but had no response from our phone calls, emails, and notes left on the door. It turned out he was in Spain with his Spanish wife, but by coincidence we ended up renting a house 3 doors down from his in the old city.

I wanted to turn the burl into a bowl and found a shop with a band saw to begin the project by flattening one side. It turns out our neighbor – Achmed #101 as we came to know him – has a brother who is a wood turner and a phone call or two later found me with the lump of burl riding through the city streets to a back alley shop with a 3” padlock and 4 lathes and wood shavings aplenty. In the end I think my language ability had pegged my competence level around 7 years old, and so I wasn’t entrusted with the gouges and chippers that pared down the burl to a 9” bowl.

And while my skill level on a lathe definitely couldn’t match his, my carefulness would have compensated his cavalier-ness… I spied some calipers on the wall, and had even gotten them down, but in the end they weren’t used and the bottom was thinned two much for the jam to have structurally integrity. The gouge caught some of the twisted grain and torque the center of the bowl out of the wood. A dime sized whole now present in the bottom as though to drain a plant. I hid my disappointment and I think he hid his as well and we agreed that we would call it a feature – make up a story to tell of its function rather than admit the carelessness and the flawed execution of the desired product.

The olive wood smells of Mediterranean cuisine and begs one to just add tomatoes and crushed salt and basil to its aromas. It burns wonderfully as well – a fate that most of this burl’s neighbors endured after a lifetime of giving water – an irony of all wood destined for the flames really. I saved a small chunk from the burl that had been band sawed off to make a spoon to accompany the bowl, and my last full day in Syria I got the chance.

Achmed #101 had also introduced us to a master carpenter who specializes in Arabesque. He is an artist with wood, a humble, diligent and knowledgeable craftsman. I asked if I might work with him for a day, and he welcomed me to his shop, and although my language skills continue to bring my competence into question, he eventually entrusted me with the saws and I spent 6 hours table sawing, band sawing, chop sawing, and shaping 120 Arabesque mahogany pieces for a panel they were working on. My day was interspersed with lessons on the crosscutting, food and drink, band saw blade sharpening, coiling and uncoiling the 12 foot blade, using compasses and dividers for layout, jigs for making repetitive angular cuts, tips for avoiding tear-out, antique woodwork show-and-tells of the deteriorating 200 year old door panel he was commissioned to reconstruct using the same joinery techniques. That day was capped by an evening at his house – joined by Yvette and her family – where we were served up khanoon music and singing and dancing and food. The source of the carpenter’s compassion and sparkle evident in his parents faces who joined us and laughed and danced and urged us on to eat and sing and communicate and photograph.

The carpenter gave me an open invitation to come back. I arranged my last day to skip out on the final walk-through and financial settling of accounts with our landlord of our house so that I could spend 3 more hours in his shop. I brought my wooden burl with me that I wanted to turn into a spoon, and this soon became the project of the morning. He helped and supervised me and it felt like shop class as he suggested ways for me to make the saw take only the wood… In the next phase of the project he pulled from a drawer an old gouge and after watching my technique, sharpened it and gave me a few pointers. By then he had started to make a giant spoon, showing me how he would rough it out of a 3” log and stopping at each step to check with me as to the shape it should be and if that was what I wanted (my language skills not good enough to say that I only wanted one spoon – a memory more than a utensil, but of course I was getting a lesson and a memory which was doubly valuable to me).

The spoon is with me now, the bowl having made its way with family back to the states to await reunion in June. The spoon is very rough. I still need to work the edges and gouge out some more, but time did not permit a finished product my last day… But the memory of work on the trees, and the wood, and the bowl, and my spoon – one of my few tangibly productive acts in Syria – reminds me that work is a gift that connects us and imbues us with meaning and gives an outlet for creativity and creates things of beauty and develops our character and our friendships, and that I have been blessed throughout my life to have it.

Our Ponytails -- by Yvette

Our Ponytails

I see us in the children here.
My sisters and me, ages one, four, five
Onion tops, or front of head “goat horn” dos.
Pale, thin skin, large impish eyes
Sun-drenched against backdrops of rooftops, desert, haze.

Why did they come? And how did they feel, my young parents?
Learning new names, new faces, new foods I learn now—menaeesh, beitenjan, labneh, benadura.
Navigating playmates, home repair, pastoral visits, emergencies, impish children, nosy neighbors,
With fondness undimmed by foreign-ness.

The accents, customs, and foods of Syria feel like an old aunt.
Safety, comfort, with occasional self-consciousness, funny clothes, or bad breath,
Learned and felt mostly second-hand through my parents.

Finger-bunched motion of “stanna swaya” held out the windows of impatient taxis.
“Ya habibi!!” to the child who runs in front of a cart on a cobble-stoned street.
“Hemar!!” to the other stupid driver.
Plentiful sweet orange juice and creamy labneh.
And the generosity of the Armenian lady who put down her groceries and took us half-a-mile away to the best foul medemas shop, just because we asked where to get some for breakfast—all along jabbering in Arabic and apologizing that her own house was too small.

Learnings and Jordan observations - by Yvette

When one takes a “midlife crises pre-children” kind of round-the-world trip, it seems that there are deep, meaningful, abstract lessons one should learn. My original dreaming about this trip included words like “spontaneity,” “aesthetic,” “art,” “creativity,” “self-expansion.” And yes, in their own messy way, those ideas are being explored. But there are some more immediate lessons I’ve learned recently which I’d like to share:

1) Chinese suction cups suck—or, rather, they don’t suck enough. Our potholders keep falling from their suction-cupped-to-the-tile vantage point. Much more significantly, our $2 tub-bottom anti-slip mat has a similar effect as a slimy banana peel. As I sat in the bottom of the tub with the shower raining down on me, trying to secure the suction cups yet again and rubbing my bruised shoulder, it took no imagination to ponder what it must be like to be elderly and afraid of falling in the tub. (The mat has now been demoted to use as a rug on the dry floor.)

2) Building codes rock. Okay, so we’ve violated them before. However, now that we’ve a) melted our heater plug twice; b) blown a hole in the side of a lightbulb we were trying to screw in (even worse, this didn’t throw the breaker); c) melted the plug our mostly-gas stove is plugged into (the broiler is electric, go figure); d) enjoyed a show of sparks any time we plug anything in, we’ve decided that housing codes are good things. We’re still going through light bulbs at a rapid rate, but that may relate to item #1 above—made in China.

3) Peeled garlic stinks. Initially, the only garlic we could find came pre-peeled, by the kilo. Now, I like garlic, but even so. . . The plastic bag did little to contain the smell, and soon everything in our fridge (yoghurt, milk, left-over pudding from the night before) smelled like garlic. We attempted a rubber-gasket glass jar, the garlic still escaped. We ate it in everything we could, by the handful. We’ve now found unpeeled garlic—who knew that those peels were so much more effective than modern plastic or glass, in keeping the smell in until one really wants to include garlic in what one is eating.

4) Hot and cold proportions are surprising. When bathing from water one has heated on the stove, the appropriate proportions of hot and cold are surprising. For example, one might think one should fill the bucket with half ice cold water from the tap, and half hot water from the steaming pan one has just carefully carried up the stairs to the bathroom. One would be wrong, painfully wrong.
5) Shopping for jeans is hard. On the Southeast Asia tourist route, most women are dressed in very cool Capri pants and short-sleeved, v-necked t-shirts. Not so true in Syria. Capri pants turn every head in our neighborhood (well, the women try to be discreetly in following you with their eyes, but fail, even from behind a veil)—wow, they scream, there’s ankles here!!! Similarly so with a v-neck. I think people try to be respectful, but it’s hard to gawk respectfully, and, well, I’m foreign enough already (note the uncovered hair), that dressing this way just makes me an easy target to stare at. So, I decide that a second pair of jeans would be a good plan. Okay, so shopping for jeans is hard in the US as well. But here, the challenging factors include that almost all the shopkeepers are men who either try to be helpful or just scrutinize you while you shop—both of these are end up feeling like an ambush anytime one walks into a store. Further, Syrian thighs—not to mention current fashion trends—seem to suggest that all legs are bird-like. My grandfather was a Swiss dairy farmer and thus my thighs are not bird-like. Most of the jeans are very bling-ey, with silver thread and sequins all over the hips and pickets, some more attractive than others. And then there’s the whole price issue. Prices are negotiable in almost every shop. My 13-year-old neighbor assures me I shouldn’t pay more than SP 500 (about $10), but the prices seem to range from there to $80 jeans in the local fancy mall. Ergh. So the shopping sagas I’ve not talked about? A) peanut butter; B) camel meat, this the shop keeper’s idea and not our own; C) parts for our broken toilet; D) bikini line waxing.

Jordan . . .
Our five-day trip to Jordan was really great. We’d gotten a rough translation of the itinerary, but each new day was largely a mystery. Much more spontaneous that way. . . .

Favorites . . . we saw a lot in our 5 days, but I’ll not list everything. Here are a few faves from the trip: 1) Mt. Nebo, from which Moses saw the Promised Land and was then taken to heaven. Beautiful, peaceful, mountain with a lovely breeze and sweeping views. I hope it was a less-hazy day for Moses than it was for us, but even so we were able to see the Dead Sea, the Golan Heights, the suburbs of Amman from here. 2) Wadi Rum – beautiful desert protected area where we rode jeeps (the sun was setting, it was cold!), played football with the Bedouin kids, tried to pet protesting camels, and succeeded in petting baby goats. 3) Madaba -- mosaic of the world’s earliest / largest map, mosaics everywhere were very cool, but this one especially. 4) Jarash – ancient Roman city, a lot of it still intact. Two large theaters (love that), long colonnaded streets and circular plazas, temples to Zeus or Artemis. 5) Petra – of course, fascinating. The site is amazing. Favorite things there beyond the obvious, were the handsomely-decked-out Bedouin policeman we got our picture with, the camels we rode on (first time), and the music being played / sung out from one of the lookout towers, by the church that we hiked to on the far end of Petra. (Petra is where we were the “late ones” back to the bus—sorry, Mary!) 6) Aqaba – A very touristy, somewhat glitzy, party city. I believe 90% of people there are foreigners, it’s a duty-free zone within Jordan, situated on the beautiful blue of the Red Sea (go figure) just across from Israel. We went on glass bottom boats, didn’t see too many fish, but nice to be out on the blue water in the sunshine and the breeze.

Differences with Syria . . . I like that, during this trip, we’re learning about the nuanced differences between places by experience and exposure. Jordan has more friendly relations with the west – evidenced in the Burger King, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s and Starbucks that we saw there. There are some quite fancy malls (also one in Aleppo, but smaller). The roads seem a bit better, and the infrastructure in general a bit better / cleaner / well-repaired. Some have told us that Jordan’s put their bet on education—such as, the taxi driver may have a university degree and speak English. However, he’s working as a taxi driver. Being one of the smallest Middle Eastern countries by population, I wonder if it can “afford” to invest in things other than defense, etc. It also has been blessed, it seems, with relatively good governance by the royal family. That said, it’s also the country with the longest border to Israel—and it does have a very visible military / police presence. We visited the Jordan River, site where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and just 20 feet across the river there is Israel—with a large flag and visitor’s center. I watched another tourist on the Jordanian side as she realized that was Israel, responding with a sniff and, it seemed, “well, I don’t need to go any closer, then.” There seemed a combined fascination, fear, and irritation among our group as various tour guides pointed out which lights were Israel, beyond which set of trees, etc. Syria is still formally at war with Israel, and Syrians cannot go to Israel even if they wanted to.

Swimming. . . we got to swim in the Dead Sea (more a matter of “bobbing” than swimming), the Red Sea (I waded, Neil swam and saw some nice fish while holding to his face a child’s snorkel set which was too small to fit), and thermal hot springs. How does this work in a Muslim culture, we were eager to know. Well, all the women say they’ll swim but nearly all end up wading. Those who do swim generally wear covering (depending on the sophistication of their swimming gear, could be lycra swim suits, or just pants and a shirt) from ankle to wrist to neck). At the thermal springs, there was a “women only” area with high walls, in which the women still wore at least a swim suit with skirty-thing and biker-type shorts beneath, but there they uncovered their hair. My questions were graciously answered by many female friends.

New friends . . . Several wonderful new friends looked out for us: Moona (who shared much better food than we shared with her, loaned us sweaters when we were cold, laughed a lot, tolerated and even tried to understand our bad Arabic, practiced reading with us (she’s a grandma so I think this came naturally), argued with the bathroom guy who charged me 5 times what others were paying and got my money back. Rami (grad student in archeological restoration and conservation, good photographer, co-leader of the trip; he always made sure we knew when / where to go, ensured we were back on the bus, shared pictures and photo tips back-and-forth with Neil, told us how mosaics were preserved, and laughed at our bad jokes); Anita (young business-woman, hip-ster, fashionista, shopper, bathroom groupie); Myrna (young French teacher, photographer and picture-poser ad infinitum, sub-group organizer (dinner together back in Aleppo one week from tonight, okay?), who brought smiles, humor, beauty, grace, enthusiasm), Julie and Joaquim (Canadian and German couple working in Aleppo on water infrastructure, we shared expat stories, a distaste for high-volume Arabic music and yet another shopping mall stop, and together navigated the Jordan visa lines for foreigners). Others on the bus became less shy over the days, and were very helpful in translating a few facts about what we were seeing, or telling us when we were to be at breakfast, how many hours we had at Petra, whether to bring our swimsuits and/or a jacket, when to be back at the bus when we stopped at the mall, etc. Great group of people.

Jordan (by Neil)

We are now half-way into our whirlwind Jordan tour. We stayed last night in Aqaba and after failing to find the seashore last night we were greeted by a great view of the bay this morning with tankers in floating in the gulf and the sun striking the water. After typical hotel breakfast chaos – no clean glasses, running out of orange juice, trying to find a place to sit, we headed out to the Red Sea for a glass bottom boat ride – I saw a fish or two, but the people watching was better than the fish. The Israel-Jordan border and checkpoints were clearly visible, and it was interesting to watch our Syrian friends’ reactions to the proximity to a country they consider to be an enemy and occupier of their territory.

After the boat ride we visited a small aquarium and got to see a few more creatures up close and personal. A small sea turtle making the rounds in his tank, a very dashing looking octopus flashing different colors and putting on quite a display, along with a downright dapperly dressed green fish with radiating orangish-pink lines from his eye and a showy tail fin like that of a beta. As tours often do we were packing it in, and the next thing on the agenda was a stop at a beach - for an hour. I took the chance to swim and buy a cheap snorkel. The snorkel band was kid’s sized and wouldn’t fit over my head, so I just had to hold it onto my face and hope that my mouth could hold the breathing tube upright… I ingested too much sea water, but the fish that I saw were really beautiful and I like seeing them in the open water better than the aquarium.

From the beach we headed for Wadi Rum – a truly impressive desert valley. The monoliths are huge and rise out of the sandy valley. The sun was painting them in golden hues as we arrived and soon it brought out its red brush and shadow tools for a desert sunset. We jeeped out to some Bedouin tents and a place to walk about a bit. I ended up playing soccer with some runny-nosed kids who were all toting plastic guns and asking me for a dollar to take a picture. I ignored the latter request, and they soon were posing for me and getting in the way of the camel pictures I was hoping to take against the landscape. Yvette, Julie and Joachim came over and we all went over by the fold that held the cute little goat kids – about 30 of them or so with the youngest being 5 days old or so. They were springy-legged little things, and the one I picked up decided to snack a bit on my shirt.

As dusk gave way to night we have headed back to Aqaba and are now at the mall. We will go shopping for the next 2 hours or so, but I would rather be looking at the stars in the desert.

Lattakia (by Neil)

I swam in the Mediterranean today in Lattakia (that is ancient Laodicea) , and I am pleased to announce that it is lukewarm. Just as the apostle Paul complained about years ago. We are here for 2 days with a newly made friend and two of his children – staying at their vacation apartment on the sea. The end of November is nearing, so the tourists and summer vacationers are all gone and only a few weekend warriors such as ourselves were out on the terraced balconies.

This morning I sketched the sea and the adjacent villa, and painted it in the afternoon. In the interim we attended Friday prayers at the local mosque. I have asked a number of questions about Islam and now have a pending engagement with an English speaking Imam to talk with me as well as a Quran in English and a set of commentaries – about 10” worth of books I think.

Today was my first time to be in a mosque during the actual prayer time and to witness the collective prayer and worship service. The imam was impressive in his flowing beige robe and impeccable head wrap. He was articulate and expressive and told a number of stories to illustrate his points. I sat near the back which was lined with chairs for those too infirmed to be able to fully kneel down and bow their foreheads to the ground. They were full of character and the usual indiscretion of loud voices (thought perhaps to be a whisper) that comes with old age and hearing loss. One of my favorite scenes was of the room full of men, aligned and facing east, ready to communally pray. One small girl was there with her father and she was the only one I saw bobbing about with her head back and forth and twisting impatiently. I wish I could download the copy of my mental videotape to be able to share it with you.

After driving about in Lattakia, we came back home and I took a swim in the sea in my jeans as I hadn’t packed my swimming trunks (and it was a bit spontaneous after discovering mildly warm water)… We had a good conversation tonight about Syrian education, music and art in Islam, domestic violence and gender roles, and more personal goals for us and our families.

One of the dubious thoughts put forward was around the sin of a woman dressing overly sexually. Yvette asked if it is equally wrong for the man and the woman, and our host answered “no, it is worse for the woman.” Each man who looks and lusts has a mark against him, and she has a mark against her for each man that looks and lusts about her, so if her dress causes 100 men to look and lust after her, she may have 100 marks against her, whereas they each have 1.” Yvette felt this was dubious logic at best.

The Back (by Neil)

Flowers, flirtations, jealousy
The last two exist in the mind perhaps as much as reality

The border of decorum is explored by the young and old
The raucous group in the back is peppered with a few staid ones
Perhaps wishing their inhibitions gone as they witness the comingling -
The head covered flirtations of the Middle East

The drum is brought out and beat into a rhythm
Singing brings old men to their feet and drives others to wince

We are two busses – a front and a back

The front consists of quiet couplets talking of the day, cracking open pumpkin seeds, trying to sleep or reflect or converse

While the back escalates in exuberance –
The after-party that began with chit-chat and charades and jokes and riddles now nears its climax

Our busload camaraderie is birthed from 16 hours of shared experience:

An ancient grape pressing center from the Roman with stone channels now laced with cracks from earthquakes and erosion yet smoothed by the bygone harvests’ acidic sluices
A shopping stop for the large yellow pomegranates and orchard fresh persimmons
A hike from Darkoosh below the cliffs of the river through the orchards, past the cave tombs from antiquity, past the goats with their growling guard-dog and smoking shepherds, stopping for a stolen piece of fruit from the tree to relish the joy of plucking and sucking out the sweetness or tartness, a borrowed table from an empty home becomes a rest stop for 4 or 5 of us
At the end of the hike for the young and those who wish to be a scramble up, up, up. We slip our way to caves and shelters and goat pens hewn from the rock to provide a place to weather a passing storm or cold night. Our German and English and Syrian and American whistles and whoops and yodels echo back to us across the fertile valley.
The church atop the hill painted creamy on the backdrop of the olive groves and orchards in the setting sun

And betwixt all – the bus ride.
The stop for supper.
The stop to smoke.
The stop for coffee.

The hours of sitting and the musical chairs seating that brings the familiarity and the exuberance of the songs and the drum and the voices and the glances that say we are happy and we are family and we are friends

We slowly subdue and merge back into whispered gossip

or philosophical discussions laced with smiled affections
Numbers and emails are exchanged
Invitations extended and postulated
The outskirts of the city are lifted as we return to the womb that birthed us
We are home and tired
Another bus trip completed

Krak de Chevaliers (by Neil)

The sky toyed with us all day and showed us many moods. The skies raced about changing from cloudy to blue and back again. We drove the serpentine roads beneath them from church to viewpoint to castle. At length we arrived at the crusader stronghold. It sits in the Homs gap that provides a way from the Mediterranean to the East…. One of the key and therefore fought over trade routes of antiquity. Bedia – who is pushing 75 – wasn’t quite up to the wet slippery citadel steps, and the up and down that it entailed, but still acted as tour guide and went with us up to the entrance before bidding us to continue on.

The scale of the undertaking to build something of this scale and complexity always amazes me. Lots of levels and layers of massive stones. The steps turned into a waterfall when the rain was at its peak and it was fascinating to see some of the ancient drainage systems hard at work funneling and diverting water . I was looking over the outer wall towards an aqueduct that must have supplied additional water to the castle. Just then a shepherd appeared beneath the structure with 30 wet sheep walking in two files trailing behind him. I wasn’t quick enough with the camera to capture the scene, but still it imprinted in my memory as something that seemed fitting with the setting – in contrast to the tour busses and the French and British tourist groups.

We traipsed about photographing one another and eavesdropping on occasional tidbits of history from passing tour groups. I understand that once this mountain fortress was one of a series signal towers that could be used to quickly send warnings of danger across the countryside.

Upon our return we had a light lunch: greenbeans slow cooked with oil and garlic and onions; baked cauliflower with onions with a tahini garlic lemon sauce; homemade pizza dough with corn, mushrooms, olives, tomatoes, and peppers; bulghar mujedrah; cabbage and tomato salad dressed with lemon and olive oil; pomegranates; tea; sweets; homemade yogurt. Six hours later and lunch was just wrapping up for some visiting and a few more treats and sweets for the road. The hospitality is really wonderful.