On Wednesday I took it easy and hung out around the hostel most of the day practicing a new song (Hey There Delilah) and finishing up the second season of Twin Peaks on my iPod. I've just got to watch the movie now and I'm really looking forward to the conclusion. My friends in LA are pretty obsessed with this show and I just had to know why. I'm still only starting to understand however. In the afternoon I had all the hostel's hot water for my shower and went out for a haircut and shave. The guy used an old fashioned straight razor and I love it so much I may never shave myself again on this trip. Especially since it costs $1 to have them do it. In the evening I went out to dinner with Braden from the other day and he and his friends talked me into doing a trip with them in the morning to a town on the border of Israel.
The next morning we met our cab driver who is supposedly part of the secret police but I saw no evidence of this. He took us to a government building in Damascus to get special permits to visit this town. It's called Quneitra and it has a very unhappy history. It's in the Golan Heights, a piece of land that Israel seized in the 6 days war in 1967. Later in 73, after the Yom Kipur War, Henry Kissinger negotiated a fragile peace deal between Syria and Israel and saw Israel return a small slice of the Golan Heights to Syria. The town of Quneitra was part of this returned land but before Israel returned it they evacuated all of the residents (Arabs), removed everything that could be moved, unscrewed, or ripped out, and leveled all the buildings with tractors. What was handed back to Syria was a ravaged wasteland filled with landmines. Classy. Syria never rebuilt it but instead left it as a reminder of the senseless aggression (from Syria's perspective) of their enemy. Today the border is patrolled by UN troops and is a pretty dreary looking area.
After waiting an hour and a half for our permits and for our passports to be returned by the police, we set off for the border. Our driver was told by the police that he should not take us there (they don't like him for some reason) so he hired a private van to take us there and to return us to him. We drove for an hour to get there and after showing our permit and passports to half a dozen check points we finally got inside and a border guard rode in with us to make sure that we didn't do anything dumb like walk on the 
land mined grassy areas. First he showed us the hospital, one of the few standing buildings, and it looked like it had taken a hell of a beating. All the walls were covered in bullet holes and it looked like a movie set. From the roof we got a good view of the town. Behind me and the Syrian flag you can see a UN building and in the distance a watch tower on top on a hill that was the scene of several very bloody skirmishes between Syria and Israel.
After that we drove around the town for 30+ minutes looking at the flat buildings, a graffiti filled church, the barb wired border, and a mosque. I tried to climb the minaret but the guard claimed that there were vipers in the trash strewn stairwell so I steered clear. Finally we went home and I caught the first bus to Hama to meet Jowen. I was making pretty decent time but 45 minutes into the drive I felt a thump and the bus skidded to a halt on the side of the highway. I got off the bus like everyone else and saw that the back left wheels 
were missing. A little ways up the road you could see them resting with part of the axle attached. At least no one was hurt. In the 3 hours that it took to get another bus to take me to Hama I befriended a man named Muhammad who invited me to attend his engagement party the next day in a tiny town outside of Hama and off my map and I was promised there would be folk dancing, food, and live music.When I got to Hama I realized that I was sick with a cold so I got some medicine, met up with Jowen, and got some dinner. Later that night I called Muhammad to say that we would indeed attend but then he told me that his mother informed him that the party was too small and that there was no room for us. A couple days later he called me again to tell me that he was sorry still and that I was invited to attend the wedding in 3 months.
The next morning (Friday) everything was closed as Jowen and I explored Hama. This town is famous for it's water wheels which are used not to power machinery but rather to lift the water to various aqueducts. There are 1000+ year old mosaics portraying the wheels, the largest over15 meters in Diameter. At some point there were 31 of them, but today just 15 are remaining and first we walked a couple kilometers upstream to see 4 of the nicest ones and then we walked a few kilometers downstream to see the largest. The wheels emit a constant creaking and groaning of wood rubbing on wood that I thought sounded like a loud chainsaw. Hama is also somewhat famous within Syria as the site of a 
government sanctioned massacre in 1982 or so. The city was at the time full of opposition members belonging to the Islamic Brotherhood organization (a branch of which has killed tourists in Egypt). First the Syrian government shelled the city and then went in and shot 10-25 thousand people and leveled half the city. It's rebuilt since then and is pretty quite nowadays. We were shortly bored and since everything was closed I decided it was time to call Van, the man that I met in Bosra. He lives near the famous castle, Crac de Chevaliers, a couple hours away. He picked up and said that Jowen and I could come out to see him so we cause a couple minibuses and were there 2 hours later. An hour after that, Van and his wife Fabien were there to pick us up from the side of the road.
Van works for a German big-box store (called Metro?) and helps manage their suppliers that use the port at the nearby city of Tartus. His wife teaches French and English at a nearby private college and they met while they were both vacationing in Romania. She was actually teaching English there and has lived in many different places while avoiding her home country of France. Van is an Afrikaner from Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and has a big chip on his shoulder about the terrible things that went down there for his people. Basically in the 60s the blacks got the vote, some things happened, and all the whites had to flee the country lest they be murdered/raped/both. I don't understand it completely but I hear it sucked. Now the two of them live together in Syria while they save up enough money to buy a 55' sailing boat in France that he can charter. They seem like happy people.
First they gave Jowen and I a tour of the Crac de Chevaliers. This castle was built by the crusaders in the middle of the 12th century and guarded the only good route from the coast to central Syria. It withstood many sieges, including one by Saladin, but finally in 1271 it was under siege again, was the final outpost of the crusaders, had supplies for 5 years, and was garrisoned by 200 men when it was designed for 2000. The crusaders negotiated a surrender and retreated to the coast and went home. Van and Fabien showed us around and balked at the many rooms that were currently filled with plywood and hieroglyphics for a movie being shot that was supposed to take place in Egypt. It was an awesome castle, but we rather ran through it and then met up with their friend Sophia for lunch. She teaches German at the college and is the only other foreigner living in town. Sophia mentioned that when most students learn that she is German they profess their respect for Hitler and his work with the Jews. Apparently the second best selling book in the middle east is 'Mein Kamf' but most people don't understand that his antisemitism includes Arabs. I guess that everyone only sees what they want to see. She's tired of hearing about it all.
The town that they live in, Marmarita, is Christian and it was explained to me that the many Christian towns in the area are very prosperous because of their good soil, mild climate good for holiday makers and government officials, and because the non-christian (Arab) towns are overpopulated because families have an average of 7 children compared to the Christian 2. The President, Bashar, is from a minority community called Alawite and identifies with the other minority groups like Christians who hold out against the Sunni majority. Van feels that Syria's dictatorship is the only viable form of government for this and most Arab states (including Iraq) because he doesn't respect the responsibility of Syria majority in a governing capacity. His history in Rhodesia surely colors this opinion but maybe he's right too. America's foreign policy holds that Democracy is always the best solution but that doesn't always end up with the best results when the people in this land are so obsessed with ethnic grudges. I hope things in Iraq disprove this rule.
Finally that night we went back to their home where they had some guest beds for us to use. Fabien showed us how to make raw fava bean salad with lemon, fava beans, olive oil, and salt. I absolutely loved it and will prepare it in the future, though peeling the beans is a tedious process. She also made crepes and we drank vodka and schnapps late into the night. From my bed I could hear wild jackals howling in the distance as I drifted into sleep.
This morning when we got up Jowen and I did the dishes, Fabien made us some eggs, Van drove us to Homs on his way to work, and we caught a bus to the city of Aleppo far in the North of the country. We watched a Jackie Chan movie on the bus and the bus driver spent most of the ride with his eyes on the TV as well. Jowen is Canadian but of Chinese heritage and many many locals call him Jackie Chan. Not much else to do today but sleep, and tomorrow we will tour the city's citadel and then maybe head on to the coastal city of Lattakia in the afternoon.
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