In Lebanon the situation is a little better than in Syria: the speech of the French occupiers has not yet faded from memory, but even that rarely helps. The words Grand Mosquee (Great Mosque) or Citadel (“citadel” in any European language) mean nothing to them. Most squares and streets are known to them by their own, popular names. Moreover, their appearance, displaying total, stubborn ignorance of the simplest English words combined with an overwhelming desire to help, only enrages.
Trying to justify the reputation of a polyglot imposed on me by the Regnum news agency, I memorized a few Arabic words, but in most cases this was not enough. As a result, having suffered defeat, I shamefacedly bought a small phrasebook at Beirut airport, and on the plane I could already read the Arabic script. It will come in handy next time.
Despite all the difficulties of communication, the attitude towards visitors in the country is very friendly. Taxi drivers, of course, “forget” to turn on the meter, and later demand huge sums for a trifling ride; a seller will try to shortchange you, and elders at the mosque will demand money for free entry. However, all this happens in any other Eastern country where residents see a millionaire in every European.
What is far more interesting is that people in Syria do not simply pay attention to foreigners – they lean out of windows, stop in their tracks, they follow with a burning, astonished gaze, they shout “hello!” with all their might, trying to earn at least a glance from a white person. A white woman enjoys particular honor, as my wife had the opportunity to see. Throughout our Syrian epic, there was perhaps not a single person who did not pay her the closest attention. We have already grown accustomed to such features of Eastern behavior and simply tried not to wear anything provocatively European (shorts or dresses, for example). Especially since women entering a mosque are asked to dress head and arms in a black cloak.
What is much worse is that in Syria we were followed. Perhaps it is customary to keep an eye on tourists – I don’t know. I am not inclined to speculate on the reasons for such behavior of the natives. I state one thing: three times we saw a man whom we had noticed somewhere in the Old City turn up again behind our backs several hours later in a completely different place. This man pretended not to notice us (which looked doubly suspicious, because everyone else stares openly), walked past, hid behind buildings, and generally behaved rather strangely.
We came up with two guesses: either they are intelligence officers charged with watching tourists (to see if they soil a portrait of President Assad pasted on every corner?) – but then one can only sympathize with the intelligence services, their personnel do a very poor job; or the curiosity of local residents goes so far that, upon seeing Europeans, they drop their affairs, follow them, and study their behavior. We were inclined toward this version by a boy on a bicycle in the city of Palmyra, who rode past us about twenty times in one hour and fell behind only after my curses addressed to the Prophet.
Buses go to Palmyra from the Damascus bus station Pulman (in Arabic – “Pulman garage”). The journey takes three hours. The road is very picturesque: an hour after leaving, car repair shops and endless markets give way to a desert landscape in which, only occasionally, amid the sandy haze, one can see an oasis – the first I ever saw was here – or the black tents of Bedouins, who somehow find forage for their herds here. Lately Bedouins have increasingly settled closer to cities – on some suburban vacant lots, thereby blasphemously disrupting their centuries-old way of life. There are especially many of them gathered near Palmyra, and so the main items on local restaurant menus are Bedouin cuisine delicacies, and the main feature of souvenir shops are Bedouin women's costumes and jewelry.
Tourists, of course, do not go to Palmyra for this. The remains of the ancient city of the Roman era attract them much more strongly. I would not say that, in my view, these piles of marble and dozens of roofless columns constitute a wonder of the world – I, like many others, was more impressed by the tower tombs built in the same period in the desert not far from the city. In those harsh times (1st-2nd centuries AD), people were not too keen on digging the earth to bury their dead.
Rich families built sandstone towers in the desert, where on four or five floors they made something like grooves in the walls for sarcophagi, like drawers in a writing desk. Up to a hundred dead could fit in one tower, so families successfully sold extra spaces to their less wealthy fellow citizens. All this – except for the sarcophagi themselves – has been preserved and looks very mystical. The two largest towers are opened for inspection by a special person every hour.
Toward evening, all the small tourist community of Palmyra gathers on a nearby hill, where in the Middle Ages the Arabs built a small castle. This castle, in my opinion, was unable to protect them from anyone, but it guaranteed future generations a splendid view of the city, the Roman ruins, the valley of tombs, and the Syrian desert. By the way, from here one can see quite remote places somewhere beyond Palmyra, along which the road leads to the war-devastated Mesopotamia.
There are people who spend two or even three days in Palmyra and then complain that they failed to see something important. These people will spit contemptuously upon reading my story, because there will always be two points of view on tourism struggling in the world: a) one must manage to see as many places as possible; b) one must examine each place as thoroughly as possible and not leave until one has seen everything.
Proponents of the first point of view count the countries and cities they have visited. They cherish dreams of seeing the whole world, but do not stay in any city for more than a week, because by the end of that week all temples, palaces and restaurants already seem alike. Proponents of the second point of view go to the same country five times and again find something new for themselves there. Somewhere by the fourth trip they begin to think that they have already quite forgotten what a certain temple looks like, and they set off again to inspect it. At the same time, they smirk wryly upon learning that their acquaintance spent only a week in the country and moved on. “Well, what could he see in a week?” they ask themselves. “Five days would not be enough to see Damascus alone!”
To be continued.