Category: Syria

Three–No, FIVE!–Ways to Help Refugees on Mytilene

For the last two weeks, I was on the island of Mytilene (aka Lesvos or Lesbos) in Greece. Peter and I go every other summer or so–he’s been going since 1992. It just so happened this summer the island is inundated with refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and more, who are taking boats over from the Turkish coast.

I wrote a lot about the people I met at the refugee camps on my personal Facebook page, and near the end of the trip, I collected donations from friends to redistribute directly to refugees and to give to volunteers on Mytilene for supplies.

Some people missed that window to donate, so I’m posting a few options for helping out here, if you are so moved.

1) See what the Lesvos Volunteers group needs.

This is a kind of umbrella website for all the volunteers on Mytilene (a few are mentioned below). I have met and/or worked with almost all of them, and can vouch for their efficacy. As of now (early October), this website is the best way to figure out what they need.

This is because–fortunately!–the various specific volunteer groups have gotten a lot of press and subsequent donations. So their needs are now quite specific.

One of those needs, it must be said, is people, on the ground helping. If you are at all entertaining thoughts of going to Greece, and you’re a self-starter who can see what needs doing and just do it, they could use you.

2) Send a shipment of supplies via Amazon.

I set up an Amazon.co.uk wish list with basic gear for kids and adults. (Shipping from the UK to Greece is cheaper than from the US.) If you’re based in the US, ideally order with a credit card that doesn’t charge a foreign transaction fee (a lot of cards charge 3%).

The list is now maintained by Philippa and Eric Kempson, a British couple who live in Eftalou, on the north coast near Molyvos, where many refugees arrive. They and their team help people out of the water, feed them, get them warm clothes. I first read about them in this story.

3) Donate to the NGO O Allos Anthropos.

Here is a GoFundMe page I set up with Annia Ciezadlo. [EDITED: We paused donations for now so I could send a chunk of money. If we gather too much at once, it’s a mess to move it all! Bear with us.]

I cooked with them a bit one day, and Annia went a second time, and wrote this great piece about it.

This is a wonderful team of Athens-based volunteers who came to Mytilene to cook at the refugee camps. While many refugees are not poor, they are still traveling on extremely limited funds (who knows when they’ll work again?), so a hot meal from these guys is a balm for the soul. For others who are totally broke, this is the only real food they’ll get.

Super-awesome volunteer Syrian cooks on the first day I was at Kara Tepe, working with the food-solidarity group O Allos Anthropos.
Super-awesome volunteer Syrian cooks on the first day I was at Kara Tepe, working with O Allos Anthropos. These refugees are capable people–they just need some supplies to work with.

4) Wire money to the NGO Angalia. [As of 23 September: HOLD OFF for now! They are swamped with donations and can’t manage it all at once.]

Angalia (it means ‘hug’ in Greek; also spelled Agkalia) is a three-person organization that spends all donations directly. It was started by a Greek priest (he just passed away September 1)–read about him on the UNHCR blog. I met another member of the NGO, Giorgos Tyrikos, in Kalloni and immediately gave him cash. He was off to buy sandwich fixings. They do good work. See the bank-transfer details below.

If wiring money to a random bank account in Greece makes you nervous, or your bank charges terrible fees drop me an email. I’m happy to take cash via PayPal myself, then wire money in a lump sum, to minimize the cost.

You can also use the new service TransferWise, which sends money internationally with very low fees. And if you use this referral link, you get a kickback and so do I–I will donate mine to Angalia.

4) Donate to International Rescue Committee.

This is the most conventional thing to do–it’s tax-deductible and all. Of course there’s some overhead, and not all your cash will go to help people. But I can definitely vouch for the IRC.

In the short time I was on Mytilene, they did two substantially great things at Kara Tepe: laid down gravel to keep the dust down in the camp, and built shower stalls for women. Since then, they’ve done even more, such as running buses to spare refugees the 40-mile walk across the island.

Giorgos of Angalia also had a fantastic story about an IRC rep handing him an envelope full of cash earlier in the summer, on the first day Greece kicked in the capital controls–Giorgos had donated money waiting in the bank, but couldn’t withdraw it. IRC gave him 5K euros to buy food.

Many thanks in advance, and even if you can’t help now, at least keep these refugees in your thoughts.

ADDITIONALLY, for anyone with contacts in Greece: Information is in very short supply for refugees. Here is a Greek-Arabic phrase list–please distribute to anyone you know working with refugees in Greece. Also, please share this map of Mytiline island (PDF, good for printing; JPG, good for viewing on phones), with the various camps marked. And here is a Google map, for online reference.

Hey, Ladies! What to Wear in the Middle East

Last week, my esteemed colleague Celeste Brash published her Top 5 clothing picks for women traveling to hot, conservative countries.

It’s a great list, but in the heart of the Middle East, you’re dealing with dry heat and more-conservative modesty norms. So I thought I’d share what I usually pack for a Middle East trip. Let’s begin with a parable:

I once saw a Russian woman in hot pants at the Pyramids. First, I had an urge to grab her ass. Then I got heatstroke just looking at her.

Moral: There are two very good reasons to keep your skin covered in the Middle East. First, of course, is it’s just polite, and even normal people like myself (er) can respond strangely to the sight of naked flesh if they don’t see it often. Second, that sun will kill you.

I tend to spend most of my time in cities, so I want to look dressier, rather than sporty. But most of my wardrobe can adapt fine to a day in the desert or a hike up Mount Sinai.

1. Long-sleeve, button-front silk shirts.
I used to pick these up at thrift stores all the time, and I still do occasionally find one, but I have less time to comb the racks. I haven’t found a reliable first-hand source for them yet, but I always keep an eye out.

Hmmm... This doesn't look bad. But $98? That's why: thrift stores.

Silk is really sturdy and super-lightweight. It dries in a second, if you do a sink wash, and it’s hardy enough to handle whatever they do at the drop-off laundry. Buy dark colors, so it’s not see-through, and/or patterns (to hide stains).

If you can’t find silk, then button-front lightweight cotton shirts are fine. Either way, you want them to be longish–hanging over half your butt, if possible, and the sleeves should be full length. You can roll the sleeves up to your elbows, or keep them buttoned at your wrist if you’re in a very conservative situation, or cold.

2. Skinny ankle-length cotton or nylon pants with pockets.
Contrary to Celeste’s advice, I think tight clothing is A-OK. It makes you look more city-fied. And it’s not violating any modesty norms in the ME, contrary to what you might think.

I wasn’t planning on my super-skinny cropped cargo pants from J. Crew to be a travel essential, and now I wish I’d bought two pairs.

They’re very tight at the ankle, so they don’t slide down when I’m using a squat toilet. And the pockets are super-useful. I have other ankle-length pants, in nifty nylon-cotton blends, but they always lose because they don’t have pockets.

Typical capris, which end right below the knee or mid-calf, don’t do it for me. That exposes too much flesh for my taste. Too much sunburn and ogling potential.

And I wouldn’t go for leggings because, well, they’ve already got plenty of camel toes in the Middle East! (Thank you, ladies and germs! I’ll be here all week.)

3. Linen trousers.
OK, this is as close as I get to the typical desert-explorer look. I have a couple of pairs in brown and slate gray. Side pockets look proper enough (though you have to be careful about change falling out in buses). Linen is sturdy, and its rumpled-ness is somehow acceptable in high society, but you can also hike in them.

I just roll them up a couple of inches before venturing into any sketchy toilet situation.

4. Silver shoes.
You can wear the daggiest orthopedic things, but if they’re silver (or gold), you suddenly look like a fashion queen. These Doc Martens totally rocked in Cairo–nice thick soles so you can slog through muck.

I'm sorry I abandoned you in Ras al-Khaimah for getting too stinky! Next pair, I'll wear those little socklets, I promise.

It’s a bonus if your shoes are slip-off: easier to go in and out of mosques.

I also just bought these, from Ecco–not slip-off, but I think will do double-duty for low-level hiking.

5. Sports bras and tank tops.
The underpinnings. I’m not at all busty, but I do wear a sturdy bra when I go to Cairo. Young dudes in the street are like those detectors for earthquakes–they’re sensitive to the slightest jiggle.

Honestly, this might be slight overkill on my part–I’m making up for my first time in Cairo, when I actually walked around without a bra, which I wish someone had taken me aside and said, “Ahem.” Instead, some crazed dude grabbed my boob and then practically went skipping off down the street with glee. I think he might’ve felt a little like when I saw the Russian chick in hot pants: Must. Touch. It!!!

On top of a sturdy bra, I wear a very thin cotton tank top that’s very long. This guarantees my shirt isn’t see-through and covers up any gaping between button-front shirt and low-rise pants, or if wind from a bus speeding by blows my shirt up. Right now Uniqlo is making good super-long tank tops. I got some C&C California ones years ago that are nearly threadbare now, but that’s OK, since they’re just an under-layer.

Sort-of 6. Ankle-length skirt, with pockets.
Honestly, I have one of these, and I dutifully pack it every time, but I just can’t quite get on board with it. It’s relatively stylish–linen, tailored, with patch pockets. But it’s just outside the realm of my normal style, and I feel a little too much like Sensible Lady Adventurer when I wear it.

But I’m mentioning it because someone once pointed out a very good reason to wear a skirt while traveling: if you ever have to relieve yourself on the side of a road, perhaps with your whole bus looking on, a skirt gives you a little privacy.

So…just putting it out there.

7. Giant scarf.
Totally agree with Celeste on this. Always have one in your bag. I have a bunch of wonderful silk ones from Syria (sigh), but last year I got a giant (18″ x 84″) not-silk one in Morocco that has turned out to be more useful. It’s a little cozier in a/c situations, and slippery silk is tough as mosque-visit headscarf–this has a little texture so it stays in place.

Looks deceptively small...

And a really, really big scarf with distinctive colors can dress up a whole outfit. My Moroccan scarf has gold thread in it. With my shoes, it’s like an ensemble!

8.Short dresses.
I’m just developing this, but I have a nice mid-thigh stretchy tunic dress that I really like, so I tried it out with my little ankle-length pants, and presto–I’m covered up and hip-looking. Or, you know, as hip as it gets these days.

By the by, I totally yoinked this look off the streets of Cairo. Another Cairo-cool-girl standby: tight black long-sleeve top, with whatever crazy top you want over it. Only recommendable in winter, though, as having anything up under your armpits means you’ll have to do laundry sooner.

9. One pearl.
Thanks to Celeste, I have a beautiful one, from Kamoka Pearls. As she said when she gave it to me, it’s great travel jewelry. Like everything, sturdy and lightweight, but also a nice touch of bling.

10. Crunchable brimmed hat.
I’m undoing all my don’t-look-like-a-backpacker effort above, but I swear my brain will melt instantly if I don’t wear a hat. Right now, I have a kind of funky plaid one that I got in Thailand, with about a two-inch brim. Before that I had this funny crochet faux-fedora thing.

Do you have your own old-reliable clothing pieces? I’d love to hear them!

Thailand, Let Me Count the Ways, part 2

So, all this, and I would love to say the Thais are my people, that I have found my true heart-home on the globe.

And yet. And yet… I can’t. There is a connection that isn’t happening, some part of me that doesn’t throw off sparks when I come into contact with Thailand. I have felt it scores of times in Mexico, and in Syria, and even occasionally in Egypt, when I can cut through the smog and the traffic and the tourist fascination.

Is it because there is just too much like-going-with-like in Thailand? There, I’m on board with everything already. In Mexico, I feel like I’m visiting what could be my better self, if I stretched—my self that’s quicker to laugh but also more polite, that paints the room in cobalt blue and rose pink, that drinks without fretting about it. Syria is the model me that has perfected the art of hospitality, developed my sense of taste without being snobbish about it and learned to live with dignity no matter the circumstances.

More practically, though, the answer may simply be language. I speak Spanish and Arabic. Except for the ten hours Peter and I spent in a classroom in Bangkok near the end of our trip, I don’t speak Thai.

Those five days of classes were thrilling, though. Why did no one tell me there are languages in which you don’t have to conjugate verbs? That pronouncing tones can be fun, and not impossible after all? Our teacher was a delight, and even if we don’t recall anything we learned*, we at least made a Thai friend.

I rely on words. Even as I’ve switched to more of a photo format on this blog, I’ve felt like I’m cheating. The sensation produced by a great picture somehow doesn’t count if I haven’t hashed it out in three too-long paragraphs, then pruned it all back to one tight one.

As much as I felt freed up last year when we went to Thailand and bumbled around, language-less and reduced to pointing and smiling and giving the thumbs-up, I also felt cut loose, bobbing along in the current and never mooring anywhere or with anyone.

A lot of people, probably most of them, travel like this. But a lot of people are simply better at this style of travel than I am—they’re more outgoing, and they can make a real connection with people by pointing at lines in a phrasebook. But coupled with my more passive style, my lack of fluency, or even functionality, makes me a pure spectator.

I would never say I’m fluent in Spanish or Arabic, but I can order in a restaurant, buy bus tickets and crack the occasional joke—all without thinking too much about it and worrying over what kind of impression I’m making.

I think this is the key: if I can slip off my cloak of self-consciousness (like an invisibility cloak—but the exact opposite), there’s a chance for me to really see the person I’m talking to and really listen to what they’re saying. Less me, more them—probably a lesson I could use in any language, in any country.

It appears the only solution to my Thailand quandary is…more. More visits, more study, more food. And plenty more time with my bootleg Rosetta Stone software.

And in the meantime, I won’t take my grasp of Spanish pleasantries for granted, nor my ability to read Arabic.

*except the phrase paw dee, which means “just right.” But even that doesn’t really count because it turns out I already knew it, because my mom has been saying it for decades, to mean something more like “close enough.” I didn’t even know it was Thai until I took this class—it was jarring to hear a familiar phrase in a list of other non-cognates.

It must’ve worked its way into the family idiolect through my ex-stepdad, who was a monk in a Thai monastery for a while before he showed up on our patio when I was six or so. In my memory, he was wearing his saffron drawstring pants the first time I saw him, and he probably said, “Paw dee” right then, for all I know.

5 Essential Travel Strategies

Recently, a friend suggested I write a book about how I travel. But I doubt I’m the only person who thinks this way, and it doesn’t really merit 200 pages of musing. And I’m happy to give away my so-called wisdom for free. These are the things I tend to do on the road. How about you?

Rule #1: Accept any FOOD you’re given.
Food is the easiest, most concrete way to make a connection with someone with whom you might not share anything but this moment when you’re both munching on pig-blood-soaked coconut and smiling at each other. It doesn’t matter whether you don’t speak the same language, or live under different political systems or whatever.

Ag Museum: Dinner!

Besides, refusing food is just rude. Somebody is being hospitable in the most fundamental way they know–offering you something that will keep you alive.

Vegetarian? You can be veg when you order your own food. But when someone shares his plate with you at a restaurant, or gives you a free kabob just because you smile sweetly and say thank you in the local language–just take it. You’ll live.

So you might get sick. Big deal. You’ll get over it–and you’ll even have another good story to tell. (Celiac–fine, you get a pass.) Just smile, say thanks and eat the thing. You might even like it. (I liked that pig-blood stuff! Who knew?)

Read more

Syrian Fourth of July

I could claim that I read the newspaper on July 4 and saw the heartwarming story about Bashar al-Asad sending Obama a 4th of July telegram inviting him to Syria, but really, I was plotting the Syrian dinner a couple of days earlier.

During my May trip, I loaded up my suitcase with pomegranate molasses and Aleppo red pepper paste. I started to get nervous about the pepper paste when I saw Peter wantonly smearing it on his sandwiches. At this rate, it would never make it to its intended purpose, muhammara. (Muhammara is a pepper-walnut-pomegranate-molasses paste that is insanely rich and delicious.)

And after getting zucchini-stuffing instruction on that May trip, I was also itching to break out my weird zucchini-coring gadget, bought on the street in Aleppo in 2007.

Miracle Corer!

I’ll just cut to the chase: it worked like a charm!

First, you pick your firm, evenly shaped koosa (wee zucchini):
Step 1

Then you set the pointy end in the center:
Step 2

Then you set to coring:
Step 3

Twist and push evenly:
Step 4

Voila!
Step 5

You can fry up with the insides with garlic and olive oil to make another nice mezze:
Byproduct

The end result, stuffed with rice, currants and pine nuts. Yes, meat is more traditional, but we were already having lamb chops marinated in Aleppo pepper. Yeah, they look a little obscene. That makes them taste better.
Stuffed koosa

We had some grilled eggplant, topped with chopped garlic, basil and pomegranate molasses–a trick I learned on my first trip, in 1999, at a Christian social club in Hama. Though now it seems odd to me that basil was involved. Could I be imagining this part? Anyway, I like peeling the eggplant in the Turkish, zebra style:
Tower of power

Dinner got going before I thought to take real pics of anything else. We had beet greens with garlic yogurt, the aforementioned muhammara, the zucch innards and some boiled peanuts. Not Syrian, but I’d seen the fresh peanuts in Chinatown the day before, and hey, why not? I also made some potato salad, following an admittedly Americanized recipe in the Hippocrene book, A Taste of Syria. Ironically, it’s the first time I’ve ever made a boiled mayonnaise dressing. (Allspice is what made it Syrian.) And there was a big bowl of fattoush, the salad with purslane, mint, sumac and pita bits.
Tablescape

And lest anyone think we were unpatriotic: the ‘Merican flag was flying off the front deck, and we ate off my collection of state plates.

Bjork Confirms: Syria Is Cool

Per NPR, Bjork is going to collaborate with a Syrian pop star, Omar Suleyman. Fantastic! I am a sucker for Middle Eastern synthesizers, and I trust Bjork implicitly. And if more people hear about cool things happening in Syria because of it, all the better.

I wish I were cool enough to say, “Oh yeah, Omar Suleyman…I’ve got all his bootlegs.” But I am too busy wallowing in old-school nostalgic Arabic music, like fellow Syrian Sabbah Fakri.

But Omar–he’s speaking to the kids today, rockin’ the rural style and gettin’ the ladies to do some serious jiggling.

Summer drinks: Hello Oxymeli, Good-bye Rooh Afza

oxymeli-003I’ve lived in Astoria for 11 years. There are lots of grocery stores here, and new foodstuffs all the time. But it’s been a long time since I’ve found something I’ve never even heard of: oxymeli. It was just sitting there, all innocent, on the shelf at my usual Greek grocery, Greek House on 30th Avenue. I love this guy because it’s the best kind of tiny store–the kind where the more you look, the more you see things you need. Also because he stocks a lot of Turkish items, despite this neighborhood’s prejudice against. He also has good bulk chocolate and bulk spices, even mahleb, the sour cherry pits that I needed when I got on my Syrian cooking kick last year.

I always go in for one thing, and come out without about eight (it helps that there’s a 99-cent ATM in there too). This time, I was waiting for my feta to get bundled up when I saw the oxymeli.

I say “the oxymeli” as though I knew what it was. But no. It was in with the vinegars. The label says it’s a combination of sweet wine, currant vinegar, figgy stuff and honey. There are actual little chunks of fruit in it too. There’s not too much on the Web about it–it seems like it’s a modern reinvention of an ancient recipe, made by just one company, Liostrofi. (Classicists, help me out!)

I fed some to our visiting genius-bartender friend, who promptly declared, “It’s shrub!” It does taste a little like something a spry 95-year-old man has been drinking every morning his whole life, and credits with keeping him fit. And I’m not surprised that a lot of the other info about it online seems to come from SCA types (a slippery slope, food history…).

Anyhoo, it’s delicious! I used it instead of balsamic vinegar to macerate some strawberries, and it was lighter but more complex. I heartily recommend it…if you can find it.

oxymeli-002And because our pantry is overstuffed, I have to manage it the same way I do my clothes, tossing old to make room for new. The victim this time was a bottle of Rooh Afza, appealingly billed as “The Summer Drink of the East,” and smelling of rose and “fragrant screwpine.” Alas, it didn’t taste like much but sugar, and even its pretty label and ridiculous bright-pinkness couldn’t save it. Buh-bye, Rooh, and thanks anyway to Hamdafd Laboratories of Pakistan (though I love the sound of a drink made by Something Laboratories, don’t you?). According to Wikipedia, Rooh Afza used to be something more elaborate. It’s a mild understatement to call this version “less complex.”

oxymeli-004Oh, but I lie. I snuck in another new thing, without quite purging something else. It’s a bottle of mulberry syrup from Syria. It was a risky thing to bring back, considering it could have made a horrific mess in my luggage. But it’s intact (if now even already a third consumed), and in a drink-mixing frenzy over the last few days, I found it goes well with gin, and with bananas in a smoothie. Now that’s versatile–a real keeper.

Syria–Be Careful What You Wish For

For photos and more anecdotes, see my Flickr set.

My mother has this saying, “It’s hell having a good time.” Best uttered near the tail end of a party, when exhausted, or when the logistics of entertaining oneself prove very challenging.

Also, to oneself when lying in bed, bloated with delicious food.

I signed up for a culinary tour of Syria because I love Syria and I love Syrian food. Makes sense, right? Let’s just say I didn’t really think through the implications of the phrase “group trip”–ie, that we did everything as a group. And that was a lot of things, and never really included naps.

Maybe I do more stuff in a day when I’m on a research trip, but, hey, that’s work. Syria was my big vacation. So when I had to roll out of bed the first day after just five hours of sleep, it felt a little rough. Actually, it felt like karmic payback for nearly wrecking my mother during my research trip to Spain.

Granted, I’m inherently lazy, and there’s something to be said for making me do stuff. But, ohhh, I never thought I would complain about having to eat so much in such a short time. But here I am.

What we ate was remarkable. It happened to be the season for rose-petal jam, so there was quite a lot of that. Also, of artichokes–though I think the Syrians are so into sour that they sometimes forget salty, and artichokes need a lot of salt; some we ate were quite bland and didn’t have that special zing.

It was also the season for desert truffles, or kama’. I’d never had them before, and I started to get worried that we wouldn’t get any, because it was supposedly near the end of the season. Not to worry–at a massive dinner at the Club d’Alep, they were served two ways. I could only muster a couple of bites, though, because yet again, I’d managed to eat too much that day, and each bite of that dinner felt like it might be my last, before a Monty Python-esque explosion.

They were intriguing. Nice dense mushroomy texture, with a mellow, kind of all-purpose spring-vegetable taste that lasted a surprisingly long time. Nothing at all like European truffles, of course, but then neither are Mexican truffles, or huitlacoche. “Truffle” is the new “Riviera,” in terms of creative naming.

We also tasted quite a lot of varieties of kibbeh. I rarely order it myself, because it just doesn’t seem all that interesting. But we had a very nice grilled rendition, filled with a molten center of pomegranate molasses and nut paste, and the more I looked around, the more varieties I saw and tasted.

Sweets

One night mid-trip, I was lying in bed, again in some digestive misery, and it dawned on me that my money would probably have been better spent on, say, a trip to China, where I really do need someone to lead me around and translate, and to explain the food to me.

And then I woke up the next day, and we went to Pistache d’Alep, a fancy bakery, and visited the kitchens. Not being a huge sweets fan, I wasn’t expecting much. But, whoa. Words cannot begin to convey the complete niftiness of the industrial equipment at work, and the depth of craftsmanship in all the meticulous handwork. I put up a whole separate Flickr set just for the bakery trip. Don’t skip the videos.

After having my mind boggled by all the weird sweets-producing technology, we had coffee (and more sweets!) with Willy Wonka himself, who used to live on Long Island. His right-hand man, Hassan, expounded on food in a philosophical way that reminded me of Ali.

We absolutely must eat seasonally, he said, because our health comes from nature–not only is it wrong to eat oranges in the summer, he said, it’s bad for your health too. While he was saying this, however, this was going on outside the windows of the cafe:

I cannot explain…

Getting Schooled

The other really outstanding thing we did was go to the house of a woman chef for a cooking demonstration and big lunch. I could’ve sat there for days and watched her stuff eggplants. We occasionally were put to work, but kind of botched it. Here she is impatiently emptying out a mis-stuffed eggplant and refilling it the proper way.

I also learned the dirty secret to muhammara, the red-pepper-and-walnut paste: sugar. Loads of it. Also, citric acid. Apparently all the restaurants use citric acid instead of lemon juice, because the flavor doesn’t go off as fast. Of course purists frown on this, but still fascinating to know. Will mentally file with judicious use of MSG.

Solo in Damascus

After that was all over, and I bid fond adieu to my fellow travelers (the actual group part of the ‘group trip’ was excellent), I got on a train back to Damascus. On previous trips, I’ve spent just about all my time in Aleppo, so aside from a memorable nap in the Umayyad Mosque and some excellent blackberry juice just outside it, I had little impression of Damascus.

So it was a double treat to explore a new city, and to do it completely on my own terms with no schedule whatsoever. I really just wandered aimlessly for three days, eating street snacks and taking photos.

I did get a good scrub at a hammam, and drank myself nearly sick on frozen lemonades and mulberry juice. My last night in Damascus, after the one lemon slush I really didn’t need, I collapsed on my bed in a mild sugar shock.

Some random observations: Syrian men are exceedingly polite (I even witnessed a man chide his son for making flirtatious noises at me–export to Egypt, please!), but they are also giant hams. Some of the most fun I had was taking pictures of all the guys who begged me to. I was very glad to have a digital camera.

Syria seems like a notably less paranoid place than when I first visited 10 years ago. Change is happening. And here’s hoping the US doesn’t somehow screw it up with some ham-fisted negotiations.

It’s also a far less cheap place than when I first visited. That’s probably rough for Syrians, but OK by me–it used to be embarrassing how cheap it was. Now it’s on par with Egypt, roughly.

Syria is still the only place in the world I’ve gone back to just because I like it so much–if it’s possible to have a crush on a country, I suppose I do. And I’d still go back–maybe next time in the fall, for a whole range of different seasonal treats.

For photos and more anecdotes, see my Flickr set.

Syria Pics

In an amazing turnaround, I’ve managed to put them all up online within less than 24 hours of my return home!

Check out the Flickr set here.

That, however, does not include the real highlight of the trip, which was a visit to the basement lair of Pistache d’Alep, a sweet shop in Aleppo, where we got to see how all the various thready, flaky, crispy, crunchy, nutty things were made. It kind of blew my mind. So there’s a separate Flickr set all for that, which includes this video:

I love the music that happens to be playing in the background of the first clip. It really set the tone for wacky sweet shop hijinks. Imagine that on endless loop, a battalion of sixteen-year-old boys running around, giant bubbling cauldrons, flour hanging in the air and bizarrely specific industrial machinery, and you have a small hint of what it was like down there. Oh, plus, add lots of butter.