Month: April 2008

I read somewhere that the Citadel of Aleppo, topologically, started as a small rise, and grew to the relative mountain it is today through numerous phases of construction, as succeeding generations and empires constructed their temples and forts upon it, each by breaking down and filling in, or adding upon, the deposits of their predecessors. The Citadel thus represents thousands of years of human history, layer piled upon layer.

Within the walls.

And so, I believe, does each of us, or rather the imprint of culture on each of our minds. Most everything we know and believe and feel comes from the past: ancient, even pre-human, biases and tendencies; the wisdom of prophets, philosophers and scientists, passed down from parent to child, professor to student, priest to acolyte; ideas in various states of preservation, from integral cataloged wholes to mere fragments, the history and genesis long forgotten; ancient thinking persisiting and integrated into new frameworks, innovations on foundational edifices long standing, concepts grafted onto others. How often is it that you read a work from hundreds of years ago, and feel it personally, feel that it expresses thoughts you’ve had or ideas you didn’t know how to express?

This is why it is worth studying history, for it explains not only the origin of peoples, places and things, but of ourselves, the structure and content of our minds, why we think the way we do and how we have come to believe what we believe. For yes there are some absolutes, but much more is a construction accreted over time, many layers of the past supporting even the loftiest towers.

Children have of course been used as a source of labor for time immemorial. Whether helping with the harvest or performing more domestic chores, they act as a pair of hands that eases the burden on the adults of a household, whose responsibilities are multiplied by the existence of the children. Even today, to watch a boy herding sheep does not spark outrage, and such work does not seem a crime to their youth and innocence.

But seeing children work in more commercial settings–on streets, in stores or in factories–this brings out a sense of pity. Sad to report, we found many instances of child labor in Syria, some more objectionable than others. What we saw here is not the horrific, industrialized abuse that one imagines when hearing similar reports in other parts of the developing world (although in all our travels in Asia we have almost never witnessed such use of child labor), but smaller scale. To our eyes and hearts, however, each such sight was still a depressing and at times even shocking encounter.

As night falls. This small child was selling sweets on an overpass outside of the old city of Damascus.

We found these three boys in a small candy/sweets factory. Of the fifteen or so employees, most were boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen or so, giving the whole place a Willy Wonka feel. The youngest ones are separating out little paper cups that are used for packaging.

This young cobbler was working in a shoe workshop with two adults. I suppose he may have been one of their sons (or perhaps a nephew), but the somewhat grim basement setting, along with the assembly-line nature of the work, left us uneasy. [Given the medieval setting of Aleppo, it’s not hard to think of some of the child labor as apprenticeships. In medieval Bukhara, Uzbekistan, we ran into a small furniture workshop staffed with young men/boys described as a woodworking school and in Cambodia and South India, we have seen crafts for sale made by “young art students.”]

Ferrying goods into a khan, or caravanserai.

On a lighter note–kids helping tend the shops of their parents. Part child labor, part cheap daycare. (I sometimes helped my parents as a young boy, though certainly not as a regular “job.”) We frequently saw the boy juicer minding the shop alone; the boy grocer looked more like he was visiting after school. It was cute, I must admit, when little children would ask us what we needed, trying to explain the price of the merchandise.

For almost two hundred years, from the late 11th to the late 13th centuries, western Europeans maintained a presence in the Levant through the Crusades. A series of Christian holy wars triggered largely by the Seljuk Turks’ Anatolian advances (that is, a Muslim empire encroaching on the Byzantine capital of Constantinople now Istanbul), the Crusades before they were over resulted not only in decidedly un-Christian atrocities in the Holy Land, but also in a perverse attack on Constantinople itself, the western Roman Catholics pillaging in the Fourth Crusade the Orthodox Christian imperial city. (Constantinople would finally fall, to the Ottomans, in the 15th century.)

Brief chronology:

1096 – Crusaders arrive in the Middle East.
1099 – Crusaders take Jerusalem, taking advantage of a lack of unity in the Muslim forces. Residents of Jerusalem (including many Christians) are slaughtered. Several small Crusader states are formed in the Levant.
1171 – Saladin conquers Shiite Fatimid caliphate in Egypt and forms a stronger, unified Arab force.
1187 – Battle of Hattin. Saladin captures Jerusalem, reducing the Crusader presence to a string of coastal cities, principally Acre.
1260 – Ayubbid dynasty (founded by Saladin) is replaced by the Mamluk Sultanate. The Mamluks were a slave military class of Turkish origin and rose to power by coup. The first Mamluk Sultan was Baibars, who fought off not only the Crusaders but the Mongols, stopping their advance in Syria.
1291 – Fall of Acre (and Tortosa).

Some of the greatest architectural remnants of the Crusaders are their forts. Some built on preexisting Byzantine or Arab forts, and all eventually controlled by the victorious Arabs, the castles are some of the world’s finest, not only in their magnificent structure and use of military technology but also in their spectacular locations. We visited several sights, but will focus on a few below. [Please also refer to my earlier post on Tortosa]

Krak des Chevaliers (Qalaat al-Hosn)

Undoubtedly the greatest of the Crusader castles, and in a fine state of preservation, the Krak was the site of a castle since at least the early 11th century, but was expanded by the Crusaders in the mid-12th century, when it was under the control of the Knights Hospitaller. The Krak formed part of a defense network that spanned the Crusader coast and the hinterlands, and was twice successfully defended. Mamluk Sultan Baibars led a final siege of the castle in 1271, after which the Crusaders surrendered.

Machicolations at the top of the tower, a defensive structure allowing the dropping of missiles or hot liquid on an attacking force. Note the band of Arabic inscription.

Entry to the castle, a gradual slope allowing for horses to make their way to the giant stables.

Moat and glacis, or protective slope, of the central keep, all within the outer walls. The glacis is 25 meters thick (!) at its base.

The gothic loggia. Crusader castles are generally devoid of ornamentation, making it all the more striking to see this beautiful entry to the great hall. The gothic style is a very tangible reminder that the Crusaders were, in fact, European. Outside the window you can see the central courtyard of the inner castle.

Close-up of door of loggia to the great hall (on right of picture above).

This cavernous space behind the great hall connects the kitchen area to the chapel. The open stalls visible on the left are old latrines.

The chapel was converted into a mosque in the Arab period, when the mihrab (prayer niche, to the right) and minbar (pulpit) were added on the southern (Mecca-facing) wall. The chapel, of course, faces east.

Chastel Blanc (Safita)

On a peak visible from both the Krak and Tortosa, Chastel Blanc was a link in the Crusaders’ defense. After it was damaged in an attack by Saladin in 1188, the Knights Templar took control of Chastel Blanc (along with Tortosa), and refortified it into the seemingly almost solid cube it remains today. The castle was also won by Baibars in 1271. The central keep, which acted as the chapel of the fort, survives and is now an Orthodox church.

Margat (Qalaat Marqab)

On a breathtaking ridge overlooking the Mediterranean, Margat, originally an Arab fort, was strengthened by the Knights Hospitaller in the late 12th century. After successfully withstanding two sieges, the castle was surrendered to Sultan Qalaun (successor to Baibars) in 1285.

Remnant of a fresco (uncovered in 1987) of Jesus and his disciples visible on the ceiling of a side chapel of the fort’s chapel. (This photo was obtained by Derek squeezing his camera arm up to his shoulder through a very small open window and clicking blindly at the ceiling, the same way he confirmed that these frescos were indeed there.)

Saone (Qalaat Saladin)

Saone is an earlier construction, and has been renamed for Saladin, who took the castle in 1188. While not in the same state of preservation as some of the other castles, it is unique in having many identifiable works from the Byzantine, Crusader and Arab periods, and is located in beautiful woodland, with two canyons running up each side of the narrow fort.

Remnant of rock-cut support to the drawbridge. On the left you can see a metal platform that indicates where the drawbridge entered the castle.

A giant cistern (note the steps on the right).

The outer walls, but on top of solid rock.

So often in travel (and perhaps in life) you set out to do one thing, and end up discovering something else en route, an experience that ends up overshadowing your original plan. Travel at its best is often this way, when sightseeing plans end up acting as a mere framework for you to have a genuine cultural experience, the kind that cannot be planned on an itinerary.

Finding ourselves on the coastal town of Tartus (former Tortosa, city of the Knights Templar–please refer to other post) with a morning at our disposal, we set out for the ancient Phoenician ruins of Amrit a few kilometers south. The Phoenicians, in the centuries before Christ, dominated the Levant and controlled cities all over the Mediterranean. While their other cities, including Arwad, an island just off the coast of Tartus and the final base of the Crusaders, were subsequently inhabited and redeveloped by other civilizations, Amrit remained a ruin after the Phoenicians’ departure, providing a more time capsule-like view into their culture. I knew that Amrit was more of a religious center than a great city, and that the ruins remaining are few and scattered, but I was curious to see the site from having always seen mention of the Phoenicians in history books and atlases, but not knowing much about them (perhaps because, despite their great seafaring prowess and wide distribution, they, unlike the Romans, the Greeks or the Persians, do not remain as a nation).

We negotiated with a taxi driver to take us to Amrit, and thought that we were on track as we headed south on the coastal road out of Tartus–but much more quickly than I expected we ended up at a dead-end, a roundabout terminating in a military base. The driver stopped the car to inquire directions of the soldiers. Now, I had read in guidebooks that the ruins of Amrit are mixed in with military installations, which makes access to some of the ruins impossible and photography problematic, but I had not thought that we would run into soldiers before we got to any of the ruins. But no problem–the soldiers were friendly and a particularly well-built one, fresh from swimming or diving in a wetsuit that was now half off, instructed us in his hearty voice to proceed on foot through the military area. A local farmer (?) who happened to be nearby set off with us, and we bid our taxi farewell.

After the first few hundred meters, it became clear that the driver had taken the wrong road, but having faith in the soldier who said that the ruins were reachable by foot, we proceeded forward with our non-English speaking impromptu guide. He briefly stopped to point out to us a giant sarcophagus dug out in a trench, and we knew we were on the right track. Soon we came to a dirt road and a sign and within sight of the ruins of the main temple complex. We bid our farmer goodbye (with baksheesh, or tip) and walked toward the temple, which we had read was dedicated to a local god who was something like Hercules. Built from the sixth century BC, and in active use for centuries afterward, it consisted of a small central shrine within a large compound which is said to have been flooded. Nearby was a extremely long and skinny (230x30m) largely rock-cut stadium, presumably used for very narrow games (running?) and according to tourist literature able to seat over 10,000 spectators.

Central shrine, or cella, of temple

Stadium (note person on left for scale)

From there the real adventure began. The next sites to the south were monumental towers erected over burial chambers, but we didn’t know how to get there. There were some unpaved roads running alongside the temple ruins, yes, but it was not entirely clear whether they would lead to the next set of ruins, and whether cutting through the trees might provide quicker, more shaded access for those traveling by foot. Armed with my vague map, we headed due south. In part because they are tall, the towers were pretty easy to find. One had an unusual cylindrical shape, with odd ornamentation, and each had a surprising number of niches for bodies underneath.

Towers (note person on left tower for scale)

There, we met there a tour guide who was taking an elderly Swiss couple around the ruins. He offered us a ride back to town, but we thanked him and told him that we wanted to explore more of Amrit, including a third, shorter hulking tower nearby. The guide warned us that we were venturing too close to active military areas, jokingly saying that as Americans we would have our hands chopped off if we were caught in the wrong place. Of course, we knew no such thing would happen to us, but Syria being something of a police state (related post to come), we were unsure how cautious we should really be. When we told the guide that we would risk it, he more strongly counseled us against.

We wanted to see the third tower, but also didn’t want to risk detention or arrest–and so we decided to sneak up to the third tower via a circuitous path, which also allowed us first to chat with some picnicking Syrian college students (and pose for the obligatory “photos with foreigners” shoot). As we got closer, it was clear that the tower itself acted as part of a barrier to a small compound that was delineated by barbed wire. About fifty meters from the tower were two large artillery guns, and some slowly spinning radars, and I could see one soldier walking about. We got a little closer, but did not risk lingering or taking photographs (though I think the soldier near the gun must have seen us, and didn’t care that we were poking around.)

We continued on, to see a large cubic mausoleum mentioned in my guide. Although we were not quite sure whether the next fence we encountered meant we were inside or outside of a restricted area, we saw a large road nearby and so figured that we were either out of the military base or at least out of the areas closed to the public. The bigger problem was that I didn’t know how to get to the site, which I knew was about a kilometer away. Trees blocked our sight and the trails that there were were curvy and indirect. We walked about, through fields and roads, asking directions when we could but not getting much useful information (I tried in Arabic the name of the site, the word for tower and the word for cube, and a number of hand gestures to indicate what we were looking for–all to no avail).

Just when we had come upon a man who spoke some English and seemingly confidently pointed us in the right direction, we came upon the bedouins.

Now, bedouins are all over the Arab world. We have met bedouins in the deserts of Oman, and been invited to sit with them and drink cardamon-flavored coffee (they are, of course, famous for their hospitality, even among the general Arab population). But seeing Bedouins on the green Syrian coast felt strange because we were not in the wilderness, not in the desert which intuitively seems the bedouins’ natural domain. Also, this experience was new because the group that we ran into was doing something that we knew bedouins to do, but something we had not seen them doing: moving. It being the twenty-first century, the family was using a large flatbed truck, not camels or other pack animals, but their belongings were much the same as they would have been thousands of years ago–wooden poles for their tent home, canvas for the tent itself, large numbers of quilts and mats, kitchen implements and so forth. The younger men and women were unloading the truck, while children played about and the leader of the group, an elderly man in traditional dress with well-weathered skin, directed.

We lingered to see this ritual, and tried to communicate with the old man, who was quite friendly. There were so many questions
we wanted to ask, though of course we had no language in common: How often do you move each year? Do you go to the same places? How many of you live together? Doesn’t this land belong to somebody? We didn’t get the answers to these questions, but got some descriptions of the family relationships among the people present, and the (obvious) answer to perhaps my biggest question: Why still nomadic? The answer was in the form of hundreds of bleating sheep, lambs, goats and kids. Herded by mule and teenage boys, they crowded the field nearby, walking and grazing packed tight together, some looking wise and old, others mere nursing infants. The bedouin were moving for the same reason they always have–to find pasture for their flock.

It’s strange to see such historical continuity. We often think of the nomadic life as something of the past, a stage that humans went through on the way to life on farms and in cities. It becomes somewhat comprehensible in some extreme places, like the deserts of Arabia or the mountains of Central Asia, where cultivation, or year-round habitation, for climatic reasons, is not feasible. But it seems like a pattern that should not hold out, that whenever possible should give way to sedentary life. But here the bedouin were, mere hours by car from the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. The bedouins’ ancestors, for hundreds and thousands of years, had rubbed shoulders and traded, shared much the same space, as urbanized people.

In theory, to my biased mind, it seems unlikely–but it is a historical fact, and one of the things that make this part of world so unique. With the fertile coast and river valleys lying so close to desert and emptiness, it is a boundary between two worlds. In the case of the bedouin, it’s the boundary between the urban Mediterranean world and the Arabian desert, where nomads in tents and rich merchants in opulent homes have coexisted. [An old map I saw in an exhibit in Aleppo showed a bedouin encampment outside of the eastern gate–that is of course the direction they would arrive from, the direction of the desert. We found that near that gate still sell good for bedouins, like tent poles stakes.] In other contexts, and at other times, Syria has lain between Egyptian and Hittite, Greco-Roman and Persian, Christian and Muslim, Mongol and Mamluk, and so on.

A family portrait

The lady of the house, tattooed (like in so many other “tribal” cultures)

After talking with the older man and taking pictures of his family (they were very patient with Derek), we walked over to the field to observe the animals. There, we were invited for tea with a man and two younger boys, boiled over a open fire.

One of these boys joined us in our quest for the final mausoleum. We had thought that a young boy would certainly have explored the area and know instantly what we wanted–but no such luck (perhaps asking a nomad for local monuments isn’t the best idea). We wandered with the children (for at times others joined us) for almost an hour, finding some other minor ruins but not the mausoleum, even scouting fruitlessly from the roof of an inhabited house. Eventually, we bid the children goodbye and searched alone. When we had almost given up, we ran into another rather muscular half-naked man on a motorcycle, this time tattooed and for some reason mostly covered with sand, who knew where the structure was and told us to get on his bike. We stopped a few minutes later, and he indicated that we should go through a break in the fence of an orchard on the side of the dirt road. (Coincidentally, this was the same orchard that Derek had “borrowed” a couple of oranges from about twenty minutes earlier, but did not go far enough to see the mausoleum.)

The men tending the orchard didn’t seem to mind our visit, and helped us pick fruit from the best of the many trees, before walking us toward the tall tower.

Mausoleum (note person for scale on right)

Before we began our trip, we downloaded from iTunes and watched a brief made-for-television program on some of the largest Crusader structures in Syria, including the Hospitaller fort of Krak des Chevaliers (post to come) and the Templar city of Tortosa (now Tartus). From this program we knew that Tartus existed as a modern Syrian city that has in part grown up within the ramparts of the old walled city, its Crusader remnants often visible through the more recent layers of construction. Even after seeing it on video, however, we were still not prepared for this merging of old and new.

Tartus was separately established as a city during the reign of Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, when it was distinguished from the older settlement on the island a few miles ashore, Arwad, which was an important city since at least Phoenician times. In the 7th century, the city was one of the conquests of the newly-Islamic Arabs, under whose control it remained until the Crusader invasion at the end of the 11th century. For most of the period from 1099 to 1291, the city was held by the Crusaders, with the Knights Templar assuming responsibility for the city in 1152. Saladin almost retook the city in 1188, but the Templars managed to hold on, and after Saladin’s departure reconstructed and fortified the city’s great cathedral, Our Lady of Tortosa, which was originally constructed in 1123.

Interior of Our Lady of Tortosa, now a museum

The fortification of the church was accompanied by enhanced fortifications of the walled city as well, which strong walls have survived encroaching homes over the last eight hundred years. Tortosa formed part of the series of defenses that ran along the Crusader-held coast and immediate hinterlands. Tortosa finally fell in 1292, after the Arabs had already conquered the great inland castles (post to come) and Tyre down the coast. Tortosa was the last Crusader hold on the mainland, although they would remain on offshore Arwad until 1302, purportedly to stage a renewed attack (which never took place, much like attacks on the Chinese mainland prepared on the island of Taiwan).

Of course, it’s perfectly natural in the course of the life of a city to build upon existing foundations, and this happens with almost every city. Buildings accumulate, and pieces of many eras are often on full simultaneous display. But this presentation, for reasons not quite clear to me, seems exaggerated at Tartus, where so much of the Crusader city layout (interior and exterior walls, moats) and pieces of several Crusader structures (donjon or keep, chapel) are, by their durable and distinctive masonry, easy to identify in the residential old city. For the most part, I think it speaks to the solidity of Crusader construction, and the lack of an organized effort by the inhabitants that followed to build competitive structures–most construction in the old city since Crusader times, it seems, has been relatively haphazard and minor, at times dismantling part of or building into the Crusader framework but never coming close to its permanence or scale. (The old city, of course, is only part of the story–most of the modern city of Tortosa lies outside the small enclosure of the city walls.)

Houses built into the Crusader chapel. In the documentary that we saw, I believe that these houses were occupied but they are now empty–a local man told us that the government has been gradually clearing (parts of?) the old city to be refurbished and maintained as a historical site and tourist attraction.

Houses built into the wall of what was once a vaulted hall.

Houses built into the exterior wall of the city. The inhabitants of Tartus have over the past 800 years superimposed their homes onto the foundations and blocks of the original wall–the moat is clearly discernible all around the exterior wall, as are the former towers.

A closeup of the wall. You can see the large Crusader blocks on the bottom, as well as older homes made of smaller blocks of stone and newer homes made of concrete.

Homes built into the interior wall. The street lies in the space between the interior and exterior (concentric) walls.

The wall of the city facing the sea. You can see the slope, or glacis, that was part of the defensive structure of the city.

By the time we arrived in Tartus, we had already seen several castles that we knew were once inhabited in this manner (castles that had villages spring up within their walls, which villages were later cleared), and so it was particularly interesting to see a contemporary example. Old Tartus is very much a living place, with clothes hanging to dry from windows, children playing in the narrow alleys and old men smoking nargileh in the town square.

Being an American has become, especially of late, a politically sensitive matter. I suppose this has been to a certain extent true for a while–any hegemon, by its ability to influence the course of events, is likely to have fans and detractors, and America has wielded superpower authority since at least World War II. Similarly, being European in the colonial age must have had its complications as well as conveniences, and the same for other ruling powers and their citizens in the span of time. But being American right now is particularly tricky; there is something of a global consensus that the U.S. government has abused its moral and military power, to embark on a series of misguided adventures that has endangered the world. These issues are at their most acute in the Arab world, which sees itself (and rightly so) as one of the principal targets of American militancy.

Fortunately, goodwill toward the U.S. has not totally worn, and people in Syria (and most other places we’ve been) are smart (or forgiving) enough to know that not all Americans support Bush and his policies. The response here to our stating that we’re American is universally “You are welcome,” with a heartfelt stress on “wel-come” as is the Syrian style. I may be imagining it, but I perceive that the locals want to make especially sure that we, as Americans, feel welcome, despite it all. People here (and around the world) still like and not dislike Americans (and infectious American culture). As one man put it, “Syrians love Americans. Everyone loves Americans.”

About two thirds of the time, our being American merits no special comment. But American tourists are relatively rare here, and sometimes there are some questions or comments. Often, people express, in one way or another, that while we are personally welcome, they disapprove of Bush and his policies. This gives us a chance to explain that we are in agreement with them, and look forward to the end of his presidency (this is actually fairly fun to gesticulate if the person we’re speaking to doesn’t speak English). If we have time, we explain how Bush is not only bad for Syria and the Arab world, but also for America, citing his environmental and tax policies, as well as Hurricane Katrina. Some people are also curious to hear what we think the prospects are for the next President. They want to know whether things will improve, under Hillary or Obama or McCain (when asked, they seem to prefer Hillary). U.S. policy affects the lives of people around the world, and Syrians are eager to have an insight into the U.S. domestic political process.

A fair number of times, people have asked us to tell Bush and other Americans what Syria is really like, that it is a safe place with good people. They have a sense of what our perception of the country is (mullahs and terrorists, or, perhaps as bad, complete ignorance), and want us to act as a witness to the truth (related post on “the real Syria” to come). Not even once yet in Syria have we faced hostility for being American.

[I should note that opinion in the Islamic Middle East is not totally uniform–one Kurd we met explained how he felt Bush to a liberator, a defender of freedom and a “brilliant and beautiful man.” He had similar feelings for Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice. I suppose I can see why some Kurds might have this perspective–but other Kurds we have met are of the same mind as the Syrian Arabs and us.]

One anecdote. We took a daytrip from Damascus to visit the convent at Sednaya (famous for an icon of the Virgin Mary that is revered by Christians and Muslims alike as a fertility shrine, but really is not very interesting). Having seen the church and icon, we were sitting outside a small bakery on the main road in town eating snacks (mini pizzas and small pies with meat–cheap, delicious and ubiquitous here), when a rather sturdily built man in his late thirties came out of a nearby store to greet us. He had the usual questions (where are we from, etc.) and asked us whether we had visited the church of St. Peter in town. When we said that we had not, he told us in his limited English to wait one minute, for he would take us. The minute stretched into ten, but we waited since we didn’t want to reject his kindness and I had read that the church was an interesting one, having been converted in Byzantine times from a Roman pagan building (a tomb?). Finally, he walked out of the store with a bicycle pump, which as the three of us strolled down the street he delivered at his modest home to his young son. Reaching the gate of the church, which was not far, he produced his ring of keys–it turned out that he was the custodian of several of the Greek Catholic churches in town (and without him we couldn’t have entered the church at all).

St. Peter’s of Sednaya is a functioning small church (10 meters square, 8 meters high), cubelike and austere. The doorway is partially blocked to require that worshippers bow as they enter.

We walked through the small church and went up to its roof via a set of narrow stairs. When we returned to the nave and rested in the pews, the custodian explained to us that he was from Iraq. He took out his UNHCR identification papers showing him to be a refugee in Syria, and explained that some of his other siblings were now in the U.S. Earlier, he had joked that my shoes resembled U.S. military shoes, but I had thought nothing of it–as it turns out, he was speaking from personal experience. With his limited English, he explained to us that he was an Iraqi Christian who fled Iraq after his young daughter was killed in the violence. It wasn’t clear from our conversation who was directly responsible, but it was clear that he blamed the U.S.–he couldn’t understand why the U.S. was there: Iraq was safe and secure under Saddam, including for religious minorities such as Christians, and then the U.S. came and destroyed it, causing death and chaos. From his point of view, the U.S. attack on Iraq didn’t make any sense at all, even as a religious war, which it seemed to us he thought it in part. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a large tattoo of a cross on his forearm, and demonstrated how he showed it to the American soldiers who had mistreated him and his family, saying “I am a Christian–Why are you doing this to me?” Halfway into our conversation, he broke into tears.

I had been afraid of meeting my first Iraqi. I know, I may very well have unknowingly met Iraqis while living in New York, but somehow the consolation of living in the U.S. would seem to provide some compensation for the horrors that they must have faced from the war of our causing. Like so many immigrants before them, coming to America would provide a new start with fresh hope and opportunity. But here I was faced with a sobbing man who had lost a child, and was living not in his home in Baghdad but in a small Syrian village, feeding his family on what must be a meager income from the church and no doubt feeling in limbo, his life completely turned on its head. This is the freedom we brought to many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Iraqis, and no doubt, he and his family were luckier than many others that were forced to flee or chose to stay.

In our shame, we didn’t know how to respond. We suggested that things could improve with a new president in the U.S. But, as he pointed out, it would make no difference to him–it was far too late. And perhaps it is too late for Iraq as well–the U.S. broke something that it cannot put back together again. We offered consolation and sympathy, and in the end left no doubt of our regret on a personal level for the faults of our nation. As much as Syrians may disassociate individual Americans from the Bush administration’s policies, we knew that living in a free democracy, the American people were largely to blame.