As close to Iraq as I'm gonna get any time soon
Trip Start
Feb 22, 2007
1
18
38
Trip End
Jul 19, 2008
Ain Diwar,
Syria
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Taking the 9 hour night-bus from Damascus, we arrived in the Kurdish town of Qamishli shortly after sunrise. As we got off the bus we were surrounded at once by a mob of taxi drivers and curious onlookers keen to observe our foreign appearance; it suddenly dawned on us that we were rather far from the familiarities and securities of the tourist trail
Ain Diwar 1
. Feeling jaded from our gruelling bus ride, we headed to a nearby café for tea and breakfast but, before we could take our first bite, a uniformed army officer was upon us with questions. It's a fairly standard procedure in this part of the world - everywhere you visit you will be questioned by local officers as to the purpose and length of your stay, and will be asked for your passport information. The more sinister side of this procedure in Syria is the role of the 'mukharbarat' (secret police) who, by virtue of their role, do not make themselves known; but who keep an eye on your movements and activities in the country, asking after you at your hotel and suchlike or, back in Damascus, prizing information from your landlord or neighbours.
The officer was a friendly enough chap though and, being so far off the tourist trail, was easy to charm with our unexpected abilities in his native Arabic tongue. Julian and I digested our eggs while the officer digested our information until, having each sated our respective appetites, we headed back for the road again and negotiated with a mini-bus driver to take us the remaining 90 minutes or so to our intended destination of Ain Diwar. The journey there took us through lush green countryside, flat at first and then rolling until the distance was filled with easy mountains
Ain Diwar 2
. At one point we passed a great gas field where vast orange flames shot up in to the sky, covering the land in a flickering haze. This was the landscape of a politically unrealised Kurdistan, stretching across south-east Turkey, north-east Syria, north-west Iran and northern Iraq, and we longed to venture to Iraq and to the relative peace of its Kurdish north. Maybe in a decade eh? Arriving in Ain Diwar we had the driver drop us outside a deserted restaurant perched on top of a hill overlooking the Tigris. The view was quite beautiful, though partially obscured by a grey mist, and perhaps not worth the 12 hour journey to get there. In all directions lay rolling hills that wore a lush green hue leant to them by the wet season. In the valley below, the Tigris cut a path circuitously through them, its muddy brown current glistening under an intermittent sun. To our left stood Turkey, her landscape spoiled by an ugly industrial town in the semi distance. To our right stood Iraq, her landscape a picture of tranquillity that belied the country's turmoil. It was hard to imagine that these same waters, which we watched in perfect peace, would soon enough reach Baghdad and an intractable war.
About four miles away stood a Roman bridge that was supposedly worth a visit, but to do so was illegal because it was right on the closed Syria/Turkey/Iraq border
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. Unperturbed, however, we set off by foot in search of the bridge, having just about established the correct route from the restaurant owner (the Kurdish dialect sounds more like Russian than Arabic, and so we struggled to understand his instructions). After a short distance the going became tough, as the hard track quickly turned to thick mud. Luckily there was a steady stream of trucks chugging along the route carrying stone to and from the river, so we hitched a lift with one to the bridge. The grey-stone, arched bridge was nothing to write home about - we had just liked the idea of visiting something supposedly forbidden, and to come as close as possible to Iraq in the process. Actually the bridge - and much of the surroundings for that matter - reminded me almost of the rolling landscapes of England, where stone Roman bridges and walls lay similarly half-covered by nature. Notable too was how far it now stood from the present-day path of the river, which just seemed to emphasise its age and history.
We hitched a lift back with the same truck driver who was now on his way back for another load of stone. As we approached the opening to the main road, we noticed that around the corner at the top of the road was a military checkpoint. At this point the driver suggested we get out and walk the rest of the way so he wouldn't get arrested for aiding our illegal visit to the bridge
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. We obliged and headed instead down to the banks of the Tigris in the hope of avoiding the attention of the military at the top of the hill. After a few minutes the sky suddenly turned a deathly black and ground-shuddering thunder filled the valley like a harbinger of doom. Just then we heard someone beckon us and, looking up, we saw at the crest of the hill a uniformed soldier with his Kalashnikov trained upon us. We made our way towards him and, as we got closer, saw a look of irritation etched on his face. It was time for another dose of innocent, foreigner-speaking-Arabic charm, Julian this time doing the honours. We were aided too by a local shepherd who had come over to us and told the soldier to be calm.
As the heavens opened we headed with the soldier to the military checkpoint where we were met, with similarly irritated looks, by a second soldier and the commanding officer. They demanded to know why we had not registered with them upon arrival in Ain Diwar and what we thought we were playing at visiting the bridge. We gave them our passports and, mostly thanks to Julian's charm, convinced them it was an innocent mistake. Seemingly convinced - or at least not knowing what else to do with us - they then made us tea and turned on the oil-burner so we could dry ourselves
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. There we sat in their company for an hour or so, chatting about this and that, telling them how much we liked their country (true) and their president (hmmm). We were actually quite grateful of the refuge despite its worrying beginnings, for outside was an almighty storm. I have never seen hail so big, and the green landscape of our arrival was transformed into a wintry white picture upon our departure. We said our goodbyes to the army guys and headed back to the main road in search of a lift back to Qamishli. There we jumped straight on a bus and headed back south-west to the oasis town of Deir az-Zur where lay waiting the other great Middle Eastern river, the Euphrates.
