Dinner in Aleppo

By any standards, Syria today is far from being a major tourist destination. Listed by the US Department of State as a sponsor of terrorism and at war with neighbouring Israel for more than half a century, most outsiders give the place a wide berth--which is a pity, keenly felt by the Syrians, and not just for financial reasons.

There is another side to Syria, of course, but you have to visit to appreciate it. The capital, Damascus, and second city, Aleppo, are probably the two longest continually inhabited towns anywhere in the world. The people are culturally sophisticated, politically astute, and possess an astonishing business acumen. They feel deeply wounded by their current status as a "terrorist state". In a society which is more than eighty per cent Muslim, Islamic fundamentalism is almost completely absent and weary political cynicism is the norm. Mention of Israel, the supposedly execrated "Zionist Entity", produces more sorrow than anger. Few, if any Syrians seem motivated by hatred, and most--whilst feeling hard done by--hope genuinely that the stalled peace process will ultimately succeed.

David Henley / CPA

Ahlan fi Haleb--"Welcome in Aleppo" from an archetypal Syrian orange merchant.

Syrian hospitality has to be experienced to be believed. "Ahlan"--the Arabic for "welcome"--is constantly on everybody's lips, from the driver of the ageing Packard taxi to the supposedly hard-boiled military policeman toting a battered AK47. There are other surprising and unexpected facets awaiting the visitor to today's Syria. Nothing is quite as it seems, and almost everything is stranger and more stimulating than might be expected. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Syria's main financial and military backer, in 1991, the country is making a slow but steady transition to market economics. For the average citizen this is nothing but good news--trade might almost have originated in the Levant, and the Syrians are natural business people who thrive on commerce. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Aleppo, a city of 1.5 million people located in the northwest of the country, far from the front line with Israel and just across the frontier from Turkey's Mediterranean Coast.

Long the centre of a great commercial hub linking Asia Minor with the Middle East, Aleppo--known in Arabic as Haleb--is an ancient city in a state of flux. Whilst Arabic is the universal lingua franca, the population is a fascinating mix of Arab, Turk, Armenian Kurd and Druze. Christian churches, mainly Orthodox, but Catholic and Protestant as well, exist side-by-side with the mosques of Sunni Islam. Shi'ism, too, has its place in the city, and even today a small Jewish community survives, though most Jews have taken the road to Damascus and beyond--to Israel or America.

Not that this ethnic diversity is immediately apparent to the visitor. The narrow, winding lanes of the two thousand year old Old City, like the bustling commercial streets of modern, downtown Aleppo, are packed with people doing business. The men--and in this most masculine of cultures, men predominate--all seem to sport two days growth of stubble, whether businessmen in heavy, black, Levantine suits, soldiers in worn khaki fatigues, or Arabs of the desert, in town for the day, sporting chequered keffiyah and Bedouin skirts.

David Henley / CPA

Syrian sweets at an Aleppo sweet shop.

To the uninitiated, or those used to a society where women are more visible, the effect can be initially unnerving--but any such doubts are soon dispelled as swarthy banditti features split in smiles of welcome (revealing, as often as not, a flash of gold teeth), and the universal ahlan fi Suriya, ahlan fi Haleb--"Welcome in Syria, Welcome in Aleppo" is murmured in passing.

Not that women are invisible. Syria must be about the most liberal of Arab societies where matters of female identity are concerned. Veiled faces do exist, of course, but they are as likely to be those of Orthodox Christians as of Muslims, and they seem less common--and certainly less remarkable--than the high heels, tight jeans and short skirts sported by high society and nouveau riche alike. Basically, women seem able to do as they please here--yet in a kind of vacuum, observed by outsiders, but (both figuratively and literally) untouched. Touching, at least as far as male visitors are concerned, is the prerogative of men, and takes some getting used to. Aleppo is male-bonding-city, and from dawn to dusk the visitor's hand is pumped and shaken, his cheeks bristled by dark but friendly jowls... ahlan, ahlan fi Haleb.

Aleppo is full of hotels and lodging houses, from the five star Cham Palace to a plethora of small inns and hole-in-the-wall lodging houses, yet for the visitor The Baron Hotel remains the one real place to stay. Back in 1909, when the Orient Express Railway was being pushed through from Constantinople to Baghdad, Aleppo--then an outpost of the Ottoman Turkish Empire--became a railhead. Two farsighted Armenian brothers, realising that the city would become an important stopover for travellers en route to both Damascus and Baghdad, took the opportunity to establish a European-style hotel on the outskirts of town in �gardens considered unsafe to venture to after dark�. The hotel, called The Baron, was the first luxury class hotel in the Middle East, boasting central heating (Aleppo can be really cold in winter), sweeping stairways, elaborate chandeliers and "modern plumbing" in European bathrooms.

As a consequence, The Baron became the place to stay, and it's guest book (now carefully kept in a locked safe, but available for perusal on request) lists the names of such famous visitors as the writer Agatha Christie, the aviators Charles Lindbergh and Amy Johnston, the politicians Theodore Roosevelt and Kemal Ataturk, as well as the scions of numerous European royal houses including Lady Louis Mountbatten.

Yet the Baron's best-known guest remains T.E. Lawrence "of Arabia", who noted in his monumental Seven Pillars of Wisdom that the distinguished hotel was becoming "almost a second home". In fact the hotel has good reason to remember Lawrence, who, on one occasion, left in such a hurry that he neglected to pay his bill. The bill in question remains on display in a glass cabinet in the Baron's drawing room--no doubt the management, now in the hands of the founders' grandsons, reckon that Lawrence's outstanding account has been paid many times over in terms of publicity value!

Today The Baron is but a pale shadow of its former self, the curtains and carpets faded, the once state-of-the-art plumbing now overly grandiose, clanking and antiquated, yet the establishment retains more colour and atmosphere than anywhere else in town. In the morning, as I sit down to the standard Baron breakfast of rolls, cheese, a hard-boiled egg and a pot of thick, black, sweet Turkish coffee, a shifty-looking waiter in faded black suit approaches, one eye twitching slightly above the inevitable dark stubble. Sabah al-kheir--"good morning", he says. "May I ask in which room you are staying?" On hearing my reply he leers horribly, and adds: "Oh yes, that was Mr. Lawrence's favourite room". Another, placating smile follows my look of frank disbelief. "Change money?" he asks, hopefully.

The Baron may have been built in orchards on the outskirts of the city, but today it stands on Baron Street (named after the hotel, of course), forming one side of a central block made up by Kouwatil, Al-Maari and Bab al-Faraj Streets, the very heart of downtown Aleppo. In this area, long distinguished by shop signs and advertising in Arabic, Turkish (which uses the Roman alphabet) and the strange, archaic Armenian script, a newcomer is brashly visible. Cyrillic billboards and notices, prominently displayed over shops offering imported consumer goods and traditional Syrian products alike, betoken the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of the Russian consumer. Russians, Ukrainians and Georgians are everywhere, and for the first time in twenty years I am addressed in Russian, rather than English or Arabic, on the streets of an Arab city.

Running east-west, between Baron and Bab al-Faraj Streets, is a narrow thoroughfare called Yarmouk Street. Here, amidst the seedy nightclubs and cheap kebab houses of Aleppo's red light district is another "must" for the visitor. Just a hundred metres from The Baron Hotel, on the second floor of a commercial building dating from the days of the French Mandate, is Al-Andalib--possibly one of Aleppo's best restaurants, certainly one of its most atmospheric--in every sense of the word.

David Henley / CPA

Hubble-bubble pipes await customers at the Al-Andelib restaurant.

Just getting into Al-Andalib is a task. Enduringly popular with homo halebensis, the tables are full, the lights low, the atmosphere heavy with dense, aromatic tobacco fumes. This is no place for the non-smoker--but then just about every Syrian male smokes incessantly, and the risk of inducing secondary cancer in foreign visitors seems far from the minds of the regular clientele.

The food, however, is excellent--rich mezze, Arab hors d'oeuvres comprising ground chick peas, or hummus, served with a selection of tahina, green and black olives, falafel, salads, aubergine dip and kibbih--the latter deep-fried balls of minced lamb and cracked wheat stuffed with yet more meat fried in red onions.

All is accompanied, inevitably, by piles of khobz, or flat, unleavened Arab bread. This being Syria, a secular, socialist republic, beer and arak are also available. I order a bottle of As-Shark--"The East"--a locally-produced brew which is passably quaffable, and looking up catch the eye of a keffiyah-clad, hook-nosed Arab who stares at me with what I take to be strong disapproval; this, after all, is still a predominantly Muslim country, and strong drink is haram--forbidden by God, if not by the government of President Bashir Assad. Two minutes later a half-bottle of arak arrives at my table, a gift from the fierce-eyed stranger who raises his own glass of arak, milky-white with added ice, in my direction. A flash of gold teeth--ahlan fi Suriya.

Between courses my fellow diners add to the surrounding fug by drawing on narghile, or hubble-bubble water pipes, the soft gurgle supplementing the persistent, wailing Arabic background music. My waiter can scarcely smoke a narghile whilst serving food, but he makes his own unique contribution to the atmosphere by smoking what appears to be a black Balkan Sobranie cigarette in a stubby, yellowing holder.

The food is indeed good, but the Syrians are compulsive carnivores, and I long for something other than kebab, koftah, shishlik or nuss farooj--a half chicken--for the main course. Surely something different is available... a vegetable dish, perhaps? A startled Armenian wearing a black cape and smoking what appears to be a Meerschaum pipe looks quizzically in my direction. The waiter plants two massive, hairy forearms on the table, looks me casually in the eye, and answers definitively: fi lahm--"there's meat".

The only thing missing from Al-Andalib--fresh air aside--is women. One looks in vain for any sign of the fair sex; better forget it, there are none. Not that there's any prohibition, it just doesn't happen. This is male society with a vengeance. Swarthy, moustachioed faces with heavy jowls in every corner, kissing each other's hands, cheeks--even, in one case, the crown of a balding head. If you're looking for female company, or even accompanied by a female, this is not the most simpatico of places to choose. It is, however, the Old Levant exemplified, continuing a tradition stretching back hundreds, maybe thousands of years. It's dinner in Aleppo, and it's quite unique.

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