Dimashq #3: Bosra

BOSRA: I’m not the only tourist.

I wake to the insane earliness of the day, when the sky is still dark, probably only half an hour after having been woken by what I always feel upon awakening, at first, is the most obnoxious thing in all the world: an imam reciting—almost casually—the Holy Qor’an on a loudspeaker from the Umawi Mosque down the street, letting a strange and seemingly disconnected tone fall upon each word. And it’s loud. And it’s constant. And I wonder when it will stop. And then after a few minutes of rolling in my hot bed, trying to escape the inescapability of this voice wafting in my window, I realize that I’m laying in a kind of time machine. I realize that the ancient, highly stylized Arabic, rising and falling and stretching unexpected vowels with bizarre nasal pitches, floating from the mosque must actually be a nearly exact transplant of the way illiterate desert Bedouin Arabs in pre-Islamic Arabia once recited their poetry and folktales, with repeated phrases and a significant tone hooked on to nearly every syllable to make it both possible to fully memorize, and hence orally transmit, and to play nicely on the ear. Imagining the ancient times when dudes wrapped in black robes with weird tattoos, under a tent in the bad bad desert chanted tales of battles between their many gods in this strange tongue makes me happy, and I go right back to sleep.

But I digress.

Up and at ‘em super early. The whole morning routine that you know too much about already. I open my freshly meditated eyes and the sun is risen and strong. After me and Anton the Dutch giant take our last gulp of tea and pop the plates in the sink, we out the door and through the winding alleys and then meet the small, blond, Italian and very patient Camilla by the mosque, then into the madness of the New City, where we meet small, brunette, Italian and very energetic Martina by the bus stop. The sun shines and fellas with greased-back hair and leather shoes walk to and fro’ with purpose, and it’s only 7:20 a.m. Not so different from Manhattan. City bus through the heavy city to the outskirts, wait around in a bus station parking lot where older gents with big bellies in button-up shirts recline on benches in the margin of shade and advertise their services to us gringos: “Ey monsieur! You want taxi Beirut? Amman? Monsieur…”, and then we grab tickets, link up with a party of young Italian women who don’t say a word to me or Anton, and hop on the bus of orange curtains and weak air-conditioning.

Fall asleep, and awaken in a town of horrendous white concrete block architecture, the result of poverty and geographic isolation. We headed south, towards Jordan. Catch a service van packed to the brim with humanity, and glide. We glide, like a bird with holes in its wings, along the rough highway. “Ya m3allim, mumkin twa’af hun?” ask the Syrians I sit next to and on top of in the van, we barely roll to a stop, one of them hops out at a spot on the road that seems to lead to nowhere, or perhaps beside a little settlement of plastic and concrete block bungalows lining a muddy footpath, and with no goodbyes we roll away. Land around the highway alternates between a few trees, dry fields, and tough desert patches. The Italians are intensely verbal, and their communication in a language I can’t understand but wish I could is non-stop. One of the Roman gals is actually an Egyptian/Somalian mix and just her eyes and hair are worthy enough of the title of Queen of Nubia, and I wish I could say more than just Bongiorno and Como estai. We keep on keepin on and the process of Syrians exiting the vehicle repeats itself. We roll past a few silly, enormous, New Jersey-style villas surrounded by walls and lush greenery, and sooner than I expect, we are driving amid the harsh outer reality of Bosra, which are streets which to my foreignness have no location, where the sun is intense and everything is dry as bones, and the occasional shopkeeper sits by the door of his business in the heat. We turn on to a cobblestoned street, and pass a huge mosque, one of the town’s many prides, and a moment later we halt.

We all hop out, the Italians still singing the language of Dante, and whaddya know? There’s a garden restaurant right beside the bus stop, out of which appears a Syrian of dark features who begins chatting away in Italian, solemn-faced, with our friends. A little bit of overpriced food and some serious water under the bamboo shade of the restaurant, and we venture out. We walk past the gargantuan qala3a (castle), and do not attempt to enter, because there’s already about half of our university class standing in a group with a guide spouting information at the entrance, and we wanna be a liiittle bit independent. So it’s into the ruins.

Huge, mostly collapsed, multi-story Roman (and maybe Byzantine) structures stand before us and around us. It’s madly hot. So hot and dry it’s nearly offensive to my sensitive Nordic skin, but the sun does not relent. The structures are tricky things to pull apart, in terms of who built what and when. We promenade beside a wide, glimmering reservoir that has fed the taps of this town as long as it’s been inhabited. Or just about. So we know that’s Roman. But as the eye slips over the huge columns that support nothing but open sky, and the greyish-black and awkwardly square stone block walls and little stone caverns built into the knolls, it’s hard to say what’s practical recent habitation, and what’s glamorous guidebook Roman ruins. As we cruise around on foot, me nearly limping from the damage the sun is doing me, it becomes apparent that some of the structures must have been erected within the last few centuries, or even more recently, for they stand several stories above the earth, with square windows and flat roofs and box-like building design. Much different than what I think are the Roman buildings, which sit lower above the earth (because they’ve got nearly two millennia of soil pile-up around them), and which are supported by domes, arches, and columns. Just about all the structures, whether new or old, are constructed of dark grey stone blocks, which must be because that’s the stone gathered most readily around here. At one point I approach a window just above ground level, which opens up on to two levels of rooms and storage spaces below ground level. A crooked wooden ladder leads one from the window to the ancient rooms below. But with the visor on my hat limiting my vision, I ram the window’s stone edge with my skull as I try to pass through, and it nearly knocks me to the ground and definitely disorients me. Up on a knoll a few minutes later, I try to snap photos of a dude in a long white robe and checkered red and white headscarf, looking like he is straight out of the Saudi Kingdom, who rides a tiny motorcycle through the trafficless streets of the ruin town and straight into the blue doorway of his little home sitting among the ancientness and closes the door. Totally convenient.

Later we poke our heads through a gaping hole in a wall, part of which is buried below ground level. We enter, for it leads to a shadowy refuge from the screaming sun. Within, there is a cobbled, domed ceiling sitting above a thick arch that holds the chamber together, and little hand-carved recesses in the walls of this circular space are empty, where ancient Christian idols must have once stood. Looking around, I imagine Christian worshippers from the fifth century praying in this little room to that all-powerful bearded fellow they think is in the sky. To my left is another little chamber made of stone blocks where sun shards stream through and look very holy. I’ll post some pictures.

Later still, as we try to reach some end destination that I just don’t seem to be understanding, we enter a petite mosque now in disuse. The story goes that the Prophet Muhammed rode a camel here, and the camel knelt on its knees for some reason, and now, if I remember correctly, the place is called mosque of the knees. Some little kids with dusty faces lead me down through a tiny door. Within, there is a carpeted chamber with candles and a recessed space like where an imam would stand to call the prayer. I ask the kids what it’s all about, and with sureness and speed they recount to me something about Muhammed entering and praying here. All the details are lost on me, and I am at once happy I can communicate in a basic way with the youngsters but also pissed I can’t understand the details about Muhammed’s holy presence in the mosque, and I get a feeling that Arabic is impossible. Around me: columns and a bit of open space. Above me: the sky. What is sweet about at least getting an ear for this wildly popular Semitic tongue is being able to hear the regional differences in the way people talk. With these kids, down here in the hot hot South not too far from the Jordanian frontier, there is none of this everything-pronounced-like-a-question-singsong-talk of the Damascenes, with a rising tone at the end of every phrase. Instead of changing the guttural qaaf sound into a glottal stop (like how Cockneys say “shit”: shi’) as Damascenes do, they turn it into a heavy G sound, so no bit’uulu heik, but taguulu heik (“y’all say that”), and they speak like ancient wise men because they preserve both TH sounds (as in “thanks” and “this”). Classic badass Bedouin style, as far as I know. They spout more info about the mosque, and then ask for a little charity as we stand around the stony walls of the place. I don’t have enough money for them all, and I’m followed by outstretched hands for half a mile.

Finally, what tourists come to see from far and wide: the qala3a. It’s a full-on Arab castle, with high high walls and a moat (I think) and little slits to shoot arrows from. It’s tremendous, and khaki, and dusty, like the head of an enormous robot giant sticking up from the earth. The thing was built in the tenth (?) century by the local Arab imperial rulers, if my history is correct. So I cross the stone bridge over the moat, pay a few lira to enter, and then mosey through the cool tunnels of the outer walls of the castle. Little light-hatches perforate the ceiling and penetrate the dimness. I mount some steps to explore a chamber off one of the corridors, and approach an arrow-slit window to peak out. Again, my hat obscures my vision and I hit my head so hard I’m knocked into the dust. I sit in the dust for a few moments, feeling injured but deep. Then it’s up to the top of the wall where I spy excavated Roman tablets piled along the footpath, with words written with lots of V’s, but at the same time I witness long inscriptions in Arabic script carved into the outer wall, and the contrast is intense. Roman frescos of men herding cattle, camels, and people harvesting grain are present. Down some stairs and out to the main prize, the belly of the castle, which is actually a huge Roman amphitheatre. In fact, the castle is simply high walls built around the exterior of the amphitheatre. Me and Anton and Martina and Camilla come out on one of the highest tiers of seats, where ancient cats in turbans without a lot of cash to spare must have bought the cheapest tickets to see the hippest new tragedy from Rome. The seats are still smooth like they had just supported the asses of spectators yesterday. Martina and Camilla chat in Italian and I wonder if any of their ancestors had helped build this enormous theatre. Probably not. Down some steps, and I look back up to see the arches that line the rim of the theatre, and it kind of reminds me of Yankee stadium. But what is awesome is the high, flat panels of stone that form the backdrop of the stage, angled so as to echo the thundering Latin dialogue out to the ears of colonial gentry. I wish I lived here. Anyhow, cross the orchestra pit, up the stairs to the dusty stage, play with the echoes of our sun-parched voices, observe an out-of-place Russian tour group, and after a bow to the cheering spectators, we bounce and make our exit backstage.