Tartus, Lattaqia, Eid and Back

Just returned from a most fantastic weekend in the north. We (Will Clem and I) started off in Tartus at lunchtime on Sunday (which although was beautiful in places turned out to be a little limited). Our trip to Arwad island three kilometres off shore returned mixed results. The island itself is quite beautiful with plenty of archaeological remains scattered about (including a well preserved castle), and the boat trip across to it was great fun but our main purpose, lunch, was thwarted by Islam. As it turns out Arwad is an exclusively Muslim colony and as such none of the famed fish restaurants from the lonely planet guide were willing to rustle up even a solitary kipper. Instead we took a turn around the island (fifteen minutes worth), took a load more pictures and then bunked off on the next return boat to Tartus. In the island's defense it did have a magnificent, traditional boat yard still very much in service, and had we picked our arrival time more carefully, it looked likely to live up to its culinary reputation.

The next morning we were up early and keen for a day of exploring the crusader castles that litter the countryside around here. We hijacked a taxi between the three of us to take us to Krak des Chevaliers (or Qala'at Al Hussan in the local lingo) about 8 in the morning. Our driver (Joseph, or "Juseeph" as he preferred) insisited on beeping his horn at every female under the age of forty along the way. He went on to explain this habit with the phrase "Me bossman ship" which we roughly translated for him back into arabic. What the captain of a container ship was doing driving a taxi in Tartus is difficult to realise, especially since he was only about thirty five himself (and he spoke reasonable romanian as far as we could tell). Nonetheless, he made it very clear that he had been without women, and more specifically 'ficky ficky', for quite some time and we were left to our own divices to imagine why.



The castle itself is spectacular. TE Lawrence described it famously, in what is now a rather threadbare quotation, as "the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world", and despite some feeling to the contrary on my previous visit, Syrian efforts to 'restore it' have left it in a much more appreciable state than if it were strewn with rubble and continuing its decay. The initial approach to the castle is imposing but on rounding the final bend the castle looms, perched above the valley and cushioned by cloud, fairytale-esque, barring the absence of a fluttering standard. Its position is immense and with every detail and angle viewed and revealed it becomes more clear why it only ever fell to what Clem's guide describes as the "chicanery" of a Turkish Sultan (he forged a letter ordering the knights to succumb to the siege and withdraw). After several hours frolicking amongst the ruins we made up our minds to head for Lattaqia (90km to the north) via a monastery - Deir Mar Jerjees - and another castle - Qala'at Al Marqab - before being fleeced, twice, by t-shirt sellers on the battlements and then agreeing to pay our taxi drivers rent for several months in return for the journey to Lattaqia.

Qala'at Al-Marqab, must have been stunning at some point in the past. Hewn from black basalt rock it, as with all the castles in this region, commands a spectacular view out across the valleys of northern Syria in one direction and the Mediterranean in the other. Its very existence is testament to a determination of will and a lax workers rights policy, as hauling the enormous rocks which make up its body up the fairly sheer hillsides would have been precarious at best. Rather like the walls of Antioch it is hard to see how they were built, let alone attacked succesfully and the giddy views from the castle keep are unrivalled by many in their beauty. (The monastery at Deer Jerjees was something of a let down after Krak as there was little to see except that it would have been a beautiful valley in which to settle into a monastic routine, protected from above by the stern gaze of the knights in Qala'at Al-Hussan).


The next day was set for Qalaa'at Salahadin, (previously Souhain after the Norman Robert of Souaine who built it) which, although second to Krak in completeness and despite its weak record against Saladin's seige of 1188, (he had passedby Marqab as being too well defended) it is possibly the most impressive of the three castles. The view from the Daughter's Tower to the South-West cuts a straight line down through several valleys before coming to rest on Lake Assad, pooled beneath a late afternoon sun. The castle itself is a remarkable piece of engineering, as not only is it on the top of a large hill, but there is space excavated from the rock in lieu of a moat, that is equivalent to the volume of a reasonably sized apartment block. In the process of doing so they left a needle of rock 28 metres high in the middle of it to support a drawbridge, and this now forms a formidable gateway to the castle via the road. For views and magnificence as a near millenium old piece of architecture the Qala'at Salahudin is probably the most spectacular, although certainly second to Krak as a statement of might (Krak controls the Valley from the port of Tartus to mainland Syria and would have secured the supply lines to more central Crusader outposts whilst maintaining a perfect location for pillaging passing supply trains trudging the silk routes to the Mediteranean ports on what is now the Syrian and Lebanese coastline.

That evening we headed off into the hills outside Lattaqia, near a town called Jeble, where our teacher, Manal, lives with her family (when she is not in Damascus). It was the eve of the end of Ramadan, Eid Al-Fitr, and Manal had been incredibly kind in inviting us to her house to celebrate it with her family. Their house, in the mountains but within view of the sea, is in a beautiful Alawite Muslim village, much of which seems to have developed around their house since Manal was a child. We were exceptionally lucky to be privy to such a beautiful part of the world and to be invited to what is essentially Christmas, or Easter with Manal and her family.

It had a very strong feeling of a family Christmas or Easter, with a big supper (mostly laid on for us as far as I could tell) followed by a long lazy discussion that took a turn for the political around midnight, followed by a day of long walks in the stunning Jeblian countryside. Manal's cousin had brought a service minibus (from where I have no idea) up to the house and the seven of us (Manal, Fahdi, Will, Clem, Jenny, Sarah and I - all from Durham except Clem and the Syrians...) were taken up to see another castle, not far from Manal's village. Once again the view outgunned the castle itself, and unfortunately Manal had broken a bone in her foot just before breakfast and insisted on walking on it all day so that by the time we left at 9 in the evening it had doubled, if not trippled in size, despite our efforts to pack it with ice, or even pack her off to the hospital. Nonetheless, I was so glad to have gone, not only to escape the traffic and polution of Damascus, but to have had a weekend in Syrian that related to our experiences of England, and to have met some delightful Syrians and got to know Manal much better - she has the dubious pleasure of teaching us for four hours a day, four days a week - and to have found out that she is an absolute hero, as we suspected. We stumbled back into Damscus at 1:30 in the morning, knackered after two days of speaking mostly in Arabic but very glad to have made our way up to the coast and keen to go back as soon as would be polite.