Basalt Tales

Something is rotten in the land of Denmark. I say this because I wanted to go out tonight to grab some yummy local street food, and I couldn't, because protesters were on the street waving We will squash you foot-over-bug signs, and Our prophet was a peace, and yelling through loudspeakers and commiting some patriotic arson on the Danish embassy. My uncle's boss offered a gentle recommendation that we stay indoors tonight, and we decided to comply. Mon, why didn't you make me learn to speak Arabic fluently?

Already yesterday we saw seeds of trouble when, driving past the aforementioned embassy, we beheld a picket line (emm, a picket bunch, more properly) of about fiftyish. But those were peaceful protests still. The first sprouts of trouble appeared earlier today, when we were returning from our trip. We were stuck in traffic for about an hour, our four lane street packed with six queues of mostly patiently waiting cars. We thought there was an accident (and there is something profoundly disturbing in watching a police car weave through the congested traffic like a blind spinster with a broken thumb), but there wasn't, unless one believes a crowd with banners and loudspeakers can just happen to spontaneously erupt in the middle of a street like a proverbial gas main.

Oh, the trip? Was nice. We went to Bosra, or Busra, or even Borsa (as one sign proclaimed proudly), or — well, ﺑﺼﺮﻯ is the only name I trust — and then... one thing at a time. During the drive (because the B place is not that close), we went through a number of typical Syrian towns (and here I use the word town generously), many villages, and I have no idea what we did with the hermit houses standing alone in isolation by themselves in a field, since going through gives rise to a decidedly false interpretation. Most of those houses were squat and square, with armature hairs sticking out from their jarhead roofs. Wha...?

My uncle to the rescue. A typical Syrian house is built in a manner somewhat different from our own. The house rests between vertical blocks of reinforced concrete — they are built first, then the bricks are filled in between them. During all that time, the houses look as shabby as a bum's underwear, but at the last step the house is dressed in marble or stone, and it suddenly shines in all its splendour. Fascinating, but what does that have with the price of epils? Well, the hairs we were spotting were sticking out of the concrete pillars, which were in turn sticking out of the house tops, as if holding a ghostly second floor. It would be quite reasonable to assume that starting a a second floor was exactly what was happening here, but in all the houses in the village at once?!? What is really happening is clever Arab trader spirit at work: a house is not taxable until it is built. By making the houses appear clearly unfinished, the inhabitants are saving on unnecessary budget expenses.

Bosra is the site of the best preserved Roman amphitheatre. I did not know that. I am usually better informed of places I go to, but this time I was blogging while Nina was reading, so I was to be surprised. It lies in an old Roman city, a lot of which can still be seen standing. Roofs have fallen down in many buildings, but it is incredibly well preserved. And not just a building here and there, the city is about a square kilometer big, maybe even bigger, as far as I could see.

Actually, the amphitheatre is not visible at first, being surrounded by walls, moat and eleven watchtowers (if I counted correctly) with 350 arrowslits (for this you will have to trust Taysin; I'll talk about Taysin in a bit, patience!). The city is a well-preserved antique; the amphitheatre is "slightly used". It's amazing. Except for the audience seats being a bit chipped, the VIP seat backs being a bit broken, some columns being a bit replaced, it is almost like new. And since tourists in winter flock to Bosra like storks to the North Pole, we mostly had the amphitheatre to ourselves, and so I can attest to the fabulous acoustics. My uncle said it was too gloomy, seeing as how the dark basalt around us required the shiny forty-degree-centigrade sun he enjoyed the other time he was here, but I liked it. Gloomy fits.

Taysin joined us almost at the start of our tour. He worked in the delusion that he was our tour guide, and eventually the delusion proved contagious. He was a little guy, a head shorter than me, and full of enthusiasm, dragging us to every nook and cranny of the amphitheatre, suggesting restaurants, taking our pictures and calling us all my friend. He was really an amicable sort, and you couldn't not like him; however, his demeanor changed into that of an Arab businessman when we were leaving, disapprovingly suggesting that the 200 pounds that my uncle slipped him were not enough. Yes, I know, Maya, I recall your instructions: do not take anything until you negotiate the price first, but I did not have the heart to tell the guy to beat it, and no-one else apparently did, either. And he proved a source of various tidbits of information, and what we paid him was really not much when compared to what a western guide would ask for for a much more impersonal service, so I do not complain.

After we left Bosra, we went to see some volcanos. The first one we came to turned out to be a quarry, and there was no way in except to tread the muddy red earth path through the quarry workers, and the climb would have proved impossible. So we found another one, and that one was great! It was completely black, and no pictures among the myriad we took could hope to capture the amazing darkness of that hill. Suffice it to say, rock samples were collected, and some people will not be disappointed. I hope.

Then we found one more volcano, higher than the first one. In the attempt to reach it, we wandered over to a little road meandering through fields of rocks, with amazing rock walls among us. The wind was really strong, and I suspect it gets stronger, too, but the holy rock walls rose above our height, with nothing at all to bind them. The road ended in the middle of nowhere, and the only thing that marked our fated destination were several crude graves painstakingly dug from the basalt-filled ground and marked with broken marble slabs.

Retracing our proverbial steps, we finally found our way to the bigger volcano, and drove to the top. There was a restaurant there. Even though it was closed, and the winds were almost rolling us off the level top, an Arab appeared and beckoned us to enter. Indeed, their hospitality is matched only by their mercantile canniness. We politely refused, since the sun was setting and we wanted to be in Damascus before dark. Well, we reached Damascus; home was another story, and already told.