Fast Times at Deir ez-Zur

It's fun thinking about the job as a tour guide that I was offered but I don't think that I'm going to take it. I want to keep making software and the main purpose of this trip is to get this wanderlust out of my system for at least a little while and I just think that working instead of covering ground, however interesting a new experience it would be, is not what I came here for. Besides, I'm doing just fine at locating and exploiting new experiences.

To that end I've moved on to the town of Deir ez-Zur in the East of Syria. It's an open flat farming community on the fertile banks of the Euphrates River that flows out of Turkey, through Syria and into Iraq. It's one of the four rivers that's said to flow from the Garden of Eden, and it's been a critically important river to human civilization. The ancients lived here and the name Mesopotamia means 'between two rivers' and this was one of those two referred to. The other is the Tigris. Much of the land here is irrigated by it's waters and supports crops of wheat, cotton, and vegetables of all sorts.

I got to town late on Sunday and met some Spaniards at my hotel. They said that they were touring the local ruins the next day so we agreed to meet in the morning; it makes planning a lot easier on myself if I do such a thing. I spent the rest of the evening exploring the local souq (market/bazaar) and got to write a couple emails.

The next day the other travelers (Roger, Alejandro, and Sergio) and I set out to reach a river fort an hour away and were not disappointed. The structure was a defensive tower built on a rocky outcropping of a larger plateau and had two walls extending down to the river below. I can't recall it's name or how old it was, but it was certainly picturesque. I could see shepherds grazing their herds in the valleys that led to the wide and calm Euphrates River. This is land that changed hands hundreds of times over 10,000 years of warfare and the landscapes are littered with forts, defensive walls, and crumbling mud brick homes. This particular fortification had some beautiful stonework done that gave some of it's walls a layered colorful effect.

After that we hitched back to town and saw the archeological museum. I'd say that it was probably the best museum I've ever seen outside of the west in terms of presentation and English documentation though there were no standout pieces. I enjoyed the many Mesopotamian artifacts like clay cuneiform tablets, bone idols, and metal jewelry with many pieces over 8,000 years old. For lunch we wandered across town, crossed a suspension footbridge over the river and found a quiet place for lunch and a view. There we met an Englishman and spent the rest of the day chatting with him about his many travels. He'd been trekking in Afghanistan 15 years ago (after growing a huge beard and wearing local garb) and more recently visited the mountains of Pakistan where he said the beds are epically bad. He also gave some more background to the stories that I'd heard about Israeli backpackers being trouble. He said that most of them travel after serving their mandatory 4 years in the army and they can be pretty aggressive in all things thereafter. He's also seen many hostels in India that ban them outright. For reference, most/many countries outside of the West mandate 2 years in the military but that's not quite as severe as the 4 the Israelis must serve. Poor bastards.

Today the Spaniards and I visited the walled city of Dura Europos. It's a Hellenistic city founded in 280 BC and was mostly made of mud brick and soft stone so for the most part it's melted back into the land. The walls of the city were pretty impressive, only somewhat for their size but for me they were unique for their material. The local stone is a crystalline silica material that consists of large flaky crystals about 2-6 inches in length, glittering in the sun. In it's day the walls could have shone like a disco ball in the desert.

The city itself is in pretty bad condition but you can see the evidence of many homes, temples, agoras (open areas for congregation) and the port. My favorite part of it were the cliff views of the river and the farmed land below. I had some intestinal sickness that made parts of the day severely uncomfortable, but I'm back in town now and some hours have passed and I feel right as rain. At least I finally had an opportunity to use the squatter toilets and washing hose that the locals are so fond of.

Finally, the hotel owner that I've been seeing lately helped me make a reservation at the famed El-Rabbie hostel in Damascus that eluded me earlier, so I'm headed back there tomorrow and I might stay a while. There are some good day trips to be had and the city itself is supposed to be very nice. There's a local legend that the prophet Mohammed passed by the city but declined to go in because he 'only wanted to enter heaven once'. That sounds good enough for me, humble as I am.