Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to Raffa about wanting him sacked as soon as possible, when she made one of her regu-
lar checkup calls to test our waning satisfaction. The country was doing fine but our guide
left a lot to be desired. She said she would try to get a guide for us in Tartus but promised,
in any case, to change him in Damascus. Damascus was still two days away, but it was a
glimmer of hope, that we could cling onto.
Meanwhile, if a dozing guide was not bad enough, Peter drew my attention to the erratic
behavior of our driver, and I immediately saw that he, too, was dozing off; but with po-
tentially more lethal results. He could hardly keep his eyes open. We stopped at a roadside
kiosk and bought him tea, and sweet honey and nut pastries to give him a sugar fix and for
the rest of the journey, we remained on high alert in case of any further relapses.
All that excitement had finally woken up Abdulla, our dozy guide, from his slumbers. It
was just as well, as were nearing one of the main sites of the trip; Krak de Chevaliers (or
Qalaat al Hosn to the Arabs). I don't know how we managed to get there so late, consider-
ing our early departure time, but it was already 5.30 p.m. and the museum was due to close
at 6 p.m., so we visited it quickly. It was probably a combination of factors including Ab-
dulla's scrupulous planning, the driver's doziness, and the bad roads, but we almost missed
one of the highlights of our tour. I remember that the care and the organization of the site
left a lot to be desired. In addition, there were artifacts from ruins and archeological finds,
in the nearby museum, which were arranged in a very random and unhelpful order. Label-
ing on the exhibits was in Arabic only, there were no friendly guides, and so our visit there
did not last long.
The fortress had belonged to the Knights of the Hospital or the “Hospitaliers”. It did not
disappoint. It was still impressive and largely intact. In its heyday, it had housed up to three
thousand soldiers. At this point, Peter and I tried an experiment. We would stop asking Ab-
dulla questions, which he never answered anyway and just wait for him to say something
interesting or intelligent about the fortress. We were not disappointed. His performance, or
lack of performance, was masterly. He didn't utter a single word; but an enduring picture I
have of him as he leaned across the wall of the fortress, was of him languidly blowing an
impressive, big, pink, bubble with his bubblegum. He was, in all fairness, very good at that.
He also started to chat-up some female tourists from another bus party, maybe hoping to
hook up with them later and offer them his invaluable freelance services. He was a market
trader in a vast and chaotic traditional market where daily survival must have required a
fraction more energy that he put into his freelance tourist guide's job. He had been born in
a traditional “beehive” house outside Aleppo and was a slick dresser who I felt could have
offered so much more than he gave, but Ahmed from Aleppo was a hard act to follow for
anyone and an impossible act to follow for Abdulla.
