A Journey, Part 4. Reluctant Rebels

I’ve found that a near universal truth in travel is that the less touristed the area you’re in, the more special the memories will be. Tourism seems to have a way of hardening the hosts to the point where in the end, meaningful interactions become rare. With Western travellers being a relative rarity in Syria, the reception we received was always warm and often overwhelming. At the citadel in Aleppo, I remember being swamped by a crowd of excited and enthusiastic, scarfed schoolgirls, thrilled at the opportunity to finally be able to practice their English on real foreigners. Without fail, wherever we went, people opened up to us and appeared almost grateful to be able to share their views and perspectives.

Of all the markets I’ve ever been to, the souq in Aleppo is probably the most memorable. A far cry from the touristy Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, this was a market for locals, by locals, where in a labyrinth of dimly lit passages the smells of linen and leather, spices and incense mingled amid the hubbub of the merchants hawking their wares and buyers haggling for the best deal. But it was also at this souq that we had our first encounter with the male dominated perversion that taints so much of the Middle East, when Hayley was groped from behind in a crowd and to our absolute frustration we had no idea who the culprit was.

We spent two days in Aleppo before taking the road south toward Damascus. On route, we passed through Homs, now at the centre of the Syrian uprising and the scene of so much senseless devastation and bloodshed. Crac des Chevaliers, a stunningly preserved Crusader castle, lies a short drive west of Homs, and we spent a few hours there before doubling back and heading east across the desert to the ruins at Palmyra.

Up to this point in the journey, we’d met no other travellers, but in Palmyra we found a group of overlanders who had come up through Africa and were heading north. Apart from numerous other tips, it was from them that we got final confirmation that crossing through the Sudan was out of the question, making the route down through Egypt impossible. It was, however, possible to cross the Red Sea from Jeddah to Massawa in Eritrea. With no such thing as a tourist visa to Saudi Arabia though, the difficulty for us would be getting to Jeddah. After two days at Palmyra, we travelled back across the desert and down to Damascus.

Wherever we went, the Syrians we met were helpful and friendly to a fault, and my overall impression was of an industrious and content people just getting on with the business of life. Despite this outward appearance of normality in 1997, the truth was that under Hafez al-Assad, Syria had already been in a state of emergency, with draconian emergency laws, for 34 years.

It never ceases to amaze me what turmoil can lie beneath the placid facades of our existence. Things often are not the way they appear to be and even in the most oppressive and difficult of circumstances, we always seem to find ways to go about our lives under the pretense of normality. It’s almost as though we have a built-in ability to adapt ourselves in order to be able to continue functioning normally despite adversity, even to the point of denial of the adversity itself. We’re complex beings and I suspect it’s probably a survival mechanism that we’ve carried along with ourselves for eons. The reality though, that suppression ultimately breeds rebellion, is inescapable. Over time, like a river dammed, the pressure will build to the point where the smallest of cracks will cause a rupture. Unless it’s dissipated, sufficient time will always bring a reckoning and it’s just the mode of release and the way it’s dealt with that varies.

On Assad’s death in 2000, the status-quo remained intact as power passed to his son Bashar al-Assad. As the Internet grew, access to it too was controlled and social networking sites were blocked. Should we be surprised that Syria is fast becoming the most bloody uprising of the Arab Spring? How can modern leaders be so deluded as to think that suppression can be wrought without corresponding danger of uprising?

I’ve often wondered about how and why revolutions start. Why is it that the people of Syria rose up while the people of Zimbabwe, for example, remain passive despite tremendous hardship and years of despotic government? I’m not sure I know the answers, but two essential ingredients of rebellion are certainly a deep discontent with the status-quo, and a catalyst to unite and mobilize the discontented. Maybe in Zimbabwe the nature of the apparent affront is just not enough to push people over the brink, or maybe there are just too few people doing instant messaging to set the spark. But I suspect that in Zimbabwe it’s more a case of incompetent and corrupt leadership than widespread calculated and metered suppression of freedom and inalienable rights. The former may cause frustration, but seldom the outrage that can stem from the latter.

Rebellions, of course, aren’t limited to those on a national scale. We may rebel within our communities, workplaces, families, or relationships. All may manifest themselves in different ways and all bring with them the promise of change. Of all possible rebellions that we survive though, it’s those where we rise against ourselves that I believe are the most personally significant because they bring with them the opportunity to reforge ourselves, refine our truths, and realign our lives. Carl Jung believed that around the age of six, we bury those parts of self that we find intolerable and then for most of our lives we refine the persona that we choose to present to the world. As the persona diverges from our inherent sense of self, tension increases to the point where it begins to tear apart the fabric of our being and the soul begins to rebel against the person we have become. The emotional forces can be immense, but like any other rebellion we have a choice in how we deal with it. Many resort to outside help. Some crush it by sheer strength of will and denial, but in doing so remain trapped forever. Ultimately though and as with all rebellions, I believe that the only sensible approach is to come to understand the backdrop of the conflict and embark on a course of reconciliation, in this case between what we are and what the soul wants us to be. Following his own midlife, Jung spent the remainder of his years dedicated to his understanding of self, a course echoed by his famous mantra “know thyself”.

I see humankind at a crossroad that has many parallels with what we experience at midlife. As people, we have deviated so far from our essential nature that it’s creating massive strains in our societies as we see what’s happening and find it morally reprehensible and irreconcilable with what we know to be right. And it’s getting worse. Despite the spin, our leaders are making no real effort to change our course and get us off the road to apocalypse. Every year brings more devastation to nature, more species marginalized or extinct, an increasing gap between rich and poor, and more war. We have got here because of our obsession with power and greed. Never before in our history have the choices facing us been of such scale and impact.

I’m not a believer in violent uprisings and my fear for Syria is that like almost all violent revolutions of the past, Assad’s passing will only result in oppressive rule yet once more, albeit by a different party, and the the cycle of violence will ultimately repeat itself. In this sense, this is why we were so fortunate in South Africa where where the transition to democracy, under the guidance of great leaders, remained structured and was ultimately peaceful. But even here, 18 years on from the first democratic elections, the corrupting effect of absolute power and the obsession with its retention is increasingly evident.

Today’s headlines report fresh massacres in Homs and my heart is with the people of Syria. They deserve so much more.

A Journey, Part 3. The Crucible

On the afternoon of 12 February, having thawed for a few days at Nessebar, we crossed the border from Bulgaria into Turkey and headed for Istanbul. Entering the first Muslim country of our journey, we had no idea that we would spend the next four months waking almost every day to the muezzin’s call. Our route through Turkey would have us spending a few days each in Istanbul and Ankara before travelling down through Cappadocia to the Sea of Maramara and finally east to the border with Syria.

Istanbul is such a beautiful city and the sense of history is palpable. Capital of two of the most pervasive and powerful empires, first the Byzantium Empire as Constantinople and then the Ottoman Empire as Istanbul, she reigned supreme for over 1500 years. It was, quite literally, the centre of the world. With the city straddling the Bosphorous Strait – the metaphorical moat between Europe and Asia and the gateway to the Black Sea – it’s not hard to understand why. I could only imagine what this city must have been like in it’s heyday. While much of the splendour has been jaded and the beauty faded, the jewels of the city like Topkapı Palace, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque stand as proud reminders of her former glory.

In keeping with the spirit of Istanbul, Turkey itself has long served as a melting pot of cultures and people. Although the Turks and Kurds make up the bulk of the population, there are sizable minorities of Greeks, Jews, and Armenians, and dozens of smaller ethnic minorities. We’ve become used to some ethnic diversity in our modern nations, but what’s different about Turkey is that many of these groups of people have been there for centuries or even millenia. Quite literally at the intersection of Europe, Asia, Arabia, and Africa, almost anyone who went anywhere passed through Turkey en-route and invariably left traces behind.

Ask any traveller what it is that draws them to travel and the answer will almost certainly be the experience of diversity. Whether in landscape, nature, food, or people, one gets perspectives on the road that would be hard or impossible to synthesize any other way. As we immerse ourselves in the different, our views can’t but change and be enriched.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness – Mark Twain

For all our differences as people, we’re so alike and I think that the essence of what we have in common is centered on love and compassion. Wherever in the world we are, people long for happiness. They love their families, want a better life for their children and want the world to be a better place. These are the ties that bind us. I seethe when I hear derogatory remarks directed at broad groups of people, be they Zimbabwean or Mexican, Jewish or Muslim. Such prejudices are abundant in almost every sector of society in every country and they are one of the great cancers that affect humanity and steer us away from our true selves.

The word inhuman is defined as “cruel, brutal, or lacking qualities of sympathy, pity, warmth, compassion, or the like”. It’s a lovely definition because it’s a succinct reminder that we cannot call ourselves human unless we have compassion at our core and that this is our natural state. Our prejudices stem from the warrior psyche, that part of us that mistrusts and alienates others so as to ultimately render them non-human and us at the same time as inhuman (synonyms: unfeeling, unsympathetic, cold, callous, hard, savage, brutish). When practicing prejudice or maligning a group of people, let’s not forget its origins and that it’s ultimately nothing less than a form of savagery.

From Istanbul, we travelled south to Ankara where we again tried and failed to get visas for Syria and the Sudan. There was so much conflicting information that it soon became clear that we would only find out whether we would get into Syria when we arrived at the border, sans-visa. From Ankara, it was on to staying in a cave in Cappadocia – a Lilliput-lunar-like wonderland where hundreds of people still live in caves carved out of huge ant-hill shaped rocks.

Mersin, located on Sea of Maramara, is one of Turkey’s largest ports and is off the main tourist routes. On reaching it, we’d already acquired a taste for middle-eastern desserts and, stopping into a pastry shop for knafeh and coffee, we got chatting to Mehmet, the owner. Off the tourist track, we’d found the Turks to be incredibly hospitable and friendly; I will never forget an evening at a tiny rustic locals-only eatery in Dalyan, near Çeşme a few years earlier, when the sparse-toothed, vested proprietor stood by our table with his glass of raki for the entire meal and toasted Salut! at every opportunity. Mehmet was no exception and before we knew it we’d accepted his invitation to experience real Turkish food that evening.

When travelling, and especially in a country like Turkey where an invitation to tea is often just a prelude to a hard sell, the easiest thing to do is to keep the shields up. We’d heard horror stories from Turks in Istanbul about travellers being held hostage and forced to sign credit card slips at gun-point after having accepted invitations into clubs and bars. Sometimes though, one has to make a leap of faith, follow one’s intuition and place one’s trust in another because it’s only when we do that we’re able to really overcome the barriers that separate us. But trust and vulnerability are inseparable and there was no small amount of trepidation before we met up with Mehmet later that afternoon and climbed into his car to experience the city he loved from his point of view. It was a night to remember as we moved from the restaurant – where he refused to let us pay a single lira – to bars, sharing stories and perspectives in broken English. None of it would have happened without his goodwill and our reciprocal trust.

Mersin is only a short distance from the Syrian border and on this day, 15 years ago, we arrived at the border and with minimal fuss obtained our visas and crossed into Syria heading for Aleppo.

A Journey, Part 2. Indoctrination and Freedom

Leaving Eger, we pushed east toward Debrecen and the Romanian border, crossing into Romania on 6 February and spending our first night in Cluj.  From there, we took the road through Sighişoara (once home to Vlad Dracul – Dracula’s father), and Brașov (the coldest I’ve ever been), to Bucharest. The Romanian countryside is absolutely spectacular, with vast plains and rolling hills covered in snow.  The roads, though, were potholed almost beyond repair and much of the visible infrastructure was completely dilapidated.  

We didn’t linger on this part of our journey through Romania and Bulgaria and it took us only a few days to reach Nessebar on the snow-free Black Sea coast. From our limited interaction with people in on route, we were struck by the difference in attitude between people here and those in the Western countries we’d travelled through before. The concept of customer service, for instance, was almost absent – not as a result of bad attitude, but rather because one got the impression that the people had probably never seen themselves as customers, or permitted themselves what we would consider normal customer expectations.

Seven years on from the Romanian Revolution of 1989 and Bulgaria’s transition to democracy in 1990, I got the impression of countries trying to come to terms with freedom and people coming to terms with their need to accept, adopt, and adapt to new roles, expectations, and attitudes. Although the change in doctrines in South Africa was very different to that in these countries, it was easy and natural for me to identify with what we experienced in Eastern Europe.

The doctrines of the societies in which we live define our norms and have an enormous impact on our thoughts and behaviour. Growing up in apartheid era South Africa, I’d had first hand experience of the shape shifting effects that a major change in doctrine brings about, as people like Mandela and Hani that we’d been indoctrinated to believe were terrorists, turned out to be moral heroes and champions of freedom. This has always served as an ominous reminder to me of the extent to which the prevailing doctrines can shape and constrain our thoughts, and of the need to look beyond the political and other agendas of the day and seek out one’s own truth.

It seems it’s harder to see the effects of a doctrine when you’re on the inside, and much easier to find fault with the doctrines of others. This is even more so when the press is muzzled or acts merely an agent of the politicians, as was largely the case in countries of the former communist bloc and in apartheid era South Africa. In this respect, it’s our individual freedoms in general and freedom of speech in particular form the bedrock of free society, and the current trend to curtail freedom both in South Africa and in other so called liberal democracies is deeply perplexing.

Here in South Africa, the strength of the ANC allowed it to muscle the Secrecy Bill through the National Assembly in November last year. This bill makes it a crime to possess or disclose classified state information, punishable by imprisonment for up to 25 years. Whether or not the disclosure is in the public interest is irrelevant. Hot on its heels, the proposed Spy Bill will bring about the formation of a powerful State Security Agency with powers, among other things, to tap the communications of ordinary citizens without a warrant. In the United States barely a month ago, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. This permits the Pentagon to kidnap and indefinitely detain and interrogate both foreigners and American citizens, without recourse to the law, right to a trial, or legal representation.  Hardly a murmur was raised as the American Bill of Rights of 1789 was effectively repealed. Recently, my sister reminded me of a fitting and haunting quote by Benjamin Franklin.

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

We’ve seen these types of laws before. They are reminiscent of those promulgated here, in South Africa, by the Nationalist government with it’s apartheid agenda, and by other counties before, on their descent into totalitarianism. What is the agenda now and what is the truth that needs to be suppressed? A tragic and common theme among virtually all of today’s liberal democracies, is that no matter which way the people vote, they get more of the same. Are we seeing the demise of democracy in the interests of the corporate-military-industrial agenda?

I remember vividly being at university in 1984 as the year came and went, without fanfare of course. When forecasting the future, we often tend to think that changes will happen more rapidly than they do in reality. Now more than ever, I feel the real danger of an Orwellian outcome.