The Turkey (Border) Trots

Yesterday, I returned from a week of traveling around Southern Turkey where my grandmother grew up in a small border town before marrying my Syrian grandfather and moving to Aleppo.

It was a terrific trip with several Arabic school classmates through cities with layers and layers of ancient history, incredibly welcoming people and delicious desserts, including my new favorite rose-flavored Turkish delights. We traded national songs and bottles of Efes, the national beer, with a group of Turks one night at the base of the citadel in Gaziantep, a city known for producing the best baklava in the country. Another night, we watched the stars, sitting at the edge of the Euphrates River where black roses grow and where, just a couple hundred miles south in Iraq, I’m sure we couldn’t begin to imagine the horrors contrasting with our peaceful lounge in nature.

We discovered the following morning that when the Euphrates was dammed in 2001 alongside the small town where we stayed, no one had bothered to remove the buildings in its path. So after breakfast, we explored an abandoned mosque, half of which was full of silvery fish and sparkling green water. Sparrows perched on hanging wires in the main prayer room and from the top of the crumbling minaret, we looked out on the tops of roofs resting at the river’s surface.

Of all our adventures, I think the greatest highlight of the trip came at the very end as my friends and I attempted to cross the border back into Syria.

As you may have gathered, I’ve been having some troubles with food illness since I arrived. Crossing the border to Turkey was apparently not the great elixir. In fact, by the time we puttered up to the border checkpoint to return to Syria, I was feverish, my joints and back ached with flu-like pain and I was ready to toss my cookies in any quiet corner. Two Seven-Ups, aspirin and antibiotics went down the hatch and I hoped for the best, but the last thing I wanted to do was take the inevitably bumpy cross-country bus ride from Aleppo to Damascus in the middle of the night.

Luckily, the customs officers read my mind and decided to detain us. Well, not exactly. One of my friends had forgotten to buy a new visa before we left. His old visa had run out. Upon this discovery, the guards led us to an air-conditioned office where a uniformed officer, apparently in charge, was smoking at a desk and told us that this was a definite no-no – or mooshkeela. His officers, he told us, would need to send a fax to an office somewhere in Damascus to confirm that John was a student at Damascus University, despite the fact that he had a letter from the university indicating just that.

“It could be one hour. It could two hours. It could be three. Four. I don’t know,” he said, shrugging.

Amen, I thought, rocking myself in the breezy, cool air of his office. This was just what I needed.

“Yes. You may sit there,” he said, gesturing to the hot lobby through the double-plated window in his office that appeared as a mirror on the pedestrian side.

“Oh! Can’t we stay with you? I want to be with you,” I blurted out without thinking. I just couldn’t imagine being in the heat again.

“Well,” he laughed, “if that is what you want. Yes. You can stay here.”

For several minutes, we looked at each other awkwardly. Would we be staring at each other for four hours? Was he regretting his offer? I was almost regretting my request. Then, The General, as we later nicknamed him, pushed a button on his desk and another officer came into the office. Perhaps we were being escorted to the lobby.

“You want something to drink? Chai (tea)? Ahh-rah-weh (coffee)?” General said.

My friends said they would like tea. I declined, telling General that I was very sick and didn’t think drinking anything would feel good on my stomach. And, by the way, could I use his bathroom as soon as possible?

“I think you eat something bad,” he said. “Chai is good for this. You try. Ok?”

Then, he handed me a set of keys, one of which opened a special, nice bathroom at the back of the customs building. I should explain here that most toilets in Syria are really just porcelain lined holes. You don’t sit, you use your thigh muscles and you squat. Instead of toilet paper, there is a hose and you wash off. I apologize for the frank discussion of all-things bathroom, but it’s important to understand why General’s offer of a special, nice bathroom was an especially nice gift. When it’s 100 degrees or more outside and you are nauseated, a bathroom with a clean floor, no flies and a semi-antiseptic scent can go a long way. A very long way.

When I returned to General’s office, my friends were chatting him up. He was 32-years-old, single and living in Aleppo, about 25 miles south of the border. He had spent his birthday, the previous day, in this office.

“When I was in university, there is an exam always on my birthday,” he said. “Now, I spend my birthdays at work.”

He shyly toyed with two remote controls at his desk for several minutes, then turned on the television. He flipped through several music channels, a Syrian soap opera and stopped at Dr. Phil.

“Docteur Phil. I think he talks about things that are very small. There are more things to talk about,” General said, pausing briefly. “I think Docteur Phil needs a doctor.”

“I like the woman,” he added.

“Oprah?” I asked.

“Yes. Yes, her. I like her very much,” he exclaimed. Oprah, unlike Dr. Phil, he explained, discusses big and small issues that affect many more people.

Gaining confidence, he flipped from Dr. Phil to a black and white recording of a singer wailing “Habbbbbeee-beee! Habbbbeee-beee! (sweetheart)” on a stage with what looked like 20 accompanying violinists and a sign that said “Je T’Aime Love”.

“This was a famous singer of Syria,” he said. “Like Umm Kathoum. You know Umm Kathoum?”

We nodded. He changed the channels again, landing on an Arabic version of “Entertainment Tonight” and a segment about Nancy Ajram, a Lebanese pop singer that could be described as a Middle Eastern Britney Spears.

It appeared that Nancy had sprained her wrist but was still continuing to film a new video, certainly an issue of national importance. I’m not kidding. Here, it seems that pop singers are for everyone, not just young people. My 75-year-old aunt, for example, named her cat Nancy after the singer. She’s on billboards all over Syria, drinking Coca Cola, for which she is apparently the Middle East and North Africa representative. She stars in a Coke commercial playing right now which seems scant on plot, but I’m sure does the trick. Nancy walks into a house wearing a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses. She’s thirsty. She finds a Coke in her fridge and chugs it in one, somehow sexy gulp. When she tries unsuccessfully to shake out one last drop, she crushes the can with one beautifully manicured hand.

“Syrian women – hellway (beautiful)” I offered to the General.

“Yes,” he said.

“How do they do it? Is it makeup or what?” I asked.

“Do you think Syrian woman are pretty? Are you saying Syrian women are pretty?” he asked, now unsure what I was saying.

“Yes. Beautiful. And the Lebanese, too,” I said.

“Yes, but not the Egyptian,” he said, tsking. “They are big and black.”

Hmm. My friends and I shifted uncomfortably in our seats. This was probably not the time or the place for an open discussion about racism. Considering his love of Oprah Winfrey, it was also unclear exactly what General meant. We continued to watch television until he stood up and said he had business to address. We would be moving to another room for five minutes.

“We will see you again, won’t we?” I asked. I don’t know what had come over me, but I felt a strange attachment to General.

“Of course. Yes. Only five minutes,” he said.

A guard escorted us to a cool, dark room full of cots. Two other guards rushed to our sides and sprayed us with a cooling liquid that also doubled as a perfume. His efficiency scared me and I jumped when the cold spray hit my arms.

“Welcome! Welcome!” one said, gesturing for us to lay on the beds. The second guard took me to the next room where there was one cot and a large fan. Weak from fever, I moved slowly onto the cot, relieved to lay down. As soon as I lay down, he put a soft blanket around me, tucked it into the bed like a parent might for a sick child and put the fan directly on me.

“You are sick?” he said, half-asking, half-explaining. “Now, rest.”

My friends came next door minutes later, wanting to make sure everything was OK in the mystery room. They sat by my bedside while guards came in and out every couple of minutes, constantly offering cigarettes, tea and water.

“You are so nice,” my friend Tyler told one of the guards. “Thank you.”

“You are also nice,” the guard said. “We are sorry about how long you wait. You are welcome.”

With another guard, we discussed the US election. This guard did not like George Bush. Unlike other Syrians, mostly taxi drivers and shopkeepers, who have expressed their dislike of our president to me, he did not then ask what happened to Hillary Clinton or say he hoped for Barack Obama to become the next president. He seemed absolutely indifferent and walked out of the room.

When he returned, he carried a giant plate full of Arabic bread, scrambled eggs covered in pepper and a bowl of peeled cucumbers and sliced bell peppers.

“My friend made this for you,” he said. “You are hungry?”

We scarfed down the food. I hadn’t eaten scrambled eggs, one of my favorites, in months and they were delicious. My fever had broken, my bones had stopped aching and it felt good to fill up my stomach again with anything nutritious, let alone something delicious. Still, I had to eat slowly. Who knew what would happen when my body registered that I had introduced food to it again.

“Dania, why you not eat?” the guard said, concerned that I didn’t like the food. “Eat!”

He rushed back out of the room and returned with three glasses of generously sugared tea and, again, pushed cigarettes onto my friends. As we tried to finish the tea, he came into the room and told us that the fax from Damascus had come. Soon, John’s mooshkeela could be fixed.

We were escorted back to the lobby. I tried to stand in line as John sorted out his paperwork, but I felt dizzy from double-dosing antibiotics and I wanted to say goodbye to the General. I went and knocked on the door, a little worried that this was not so cool to do with a guard escort. General was no longer at his desk. He had been replaced with a new boss who was wearing a crinkly track suit and seemed ready for a brisk walk.

“Do you feel better?” he said. It was amazing how quickly news spread in this office.

“Yes. Thank you,” I said.

“Anything you need, please tell me. I will help you. We are sorry for the time you wait,” he said.

I returned to the lobby and put my head between my legs. Tyler came over and suggested we might want to ask the new General for help finding a taxi to Aleppo. Our taxi driver from Turkey had jetted hours before, understandably unwilling to wait with us and lose business. We knocked on the office door. Within minutes, New General had his men searching for a taxi driver and we were watching a late night movie about a ghost town in West Virginia with him.

Shortly, a guard returned with the driver. New General asked him a couple of questions, told him in Arabic that we needed to get to Aleppo quickly because we were late and that he needed to stay with us until we found reliable transportation. Just to be clear, I didn’t understand this in Arabic. New General translated this afterwards.

We got up to leave and Tyler, thankfully, asked if we could have a photo with New General to remember our happy times at the custom’s office (see above). He agreed and we snapped some shots. Then, we started to file out of the office to grab our backpacks when New General stopped me.

“I hope we see you again,” he said. “Welcome to your country!”