Aleppo's Old City, Part 2

It's hard for me to fathom that two months ago, I was traveling across southern Turkey on my way to the Syrian border. Then it was three days in Aleppo's old city, a maze of spice alleys, ancient churches, and forgotten history. This was the Middle East as it largely once was, Christians and Muslims coexisting and doing business together, signs in Arabic, Greek, and Armenian, church bells fighting for aural space with the muezzin's wail. And all of this intoxicating variety held together by the distant but firm hand of dictatorship, the Baathist rule of the Assads, which for half a century had held this vast country together. It was repression to be sure, but you were as likely to be put in jail for espousing radical Islamism as mentioning visits to "occupied Palestine", and it's sad to say that the most colorful and hospitable patchwork culture in the Levant is one with no traces of democracy. In fact, democracy would most likely put an end to the coexistence here, much as Syria's next door neighbor Iraq has learned the harsh way in recent years.
Politics in this part of the world are troubling, and so I chose to pretend that I was a wanderer in this city, discovering its charms in a time unnamed, a year unknown. So little has changed to the rhythm of this place in hundreds of years that you could pretend to be a traveler in a time less troubled, less uncertain. On my first evening, drinking local Armenian wine and eating the famed Aleppan dish of lamb kebab sauteed in a thick cherry sauce, I watched the sun retreat beneath the stones of the plaza, families milling about eating ice cream, European tourists crowding the cafes, no sign of the 21st century in sight. That was, save for the large tv in a nearby hotel bar blaring the World Cup match between England and Algeria.
Next, I moved southward, deeper into the heartland and further into the dream world of this strange land.