Aleppo to Palmyra is five hours by bus.  We stopped midway at Hama, which apparently gets some Old Testament mention as Hamat.  Besides a chance to stretch, Hama offered us a chance to see some thousand-year-old water wheels.  These giant wooden wheels still lift water from the “lake” up into a stone aqueduct.  And as they work, they groan—a sound that reminds one of the Ents in the Lord of the Rings.  This stop was profound in no way at all.  But if you’re going to stretch your legs in a small Syrian city, why not do it where there’s a don’t-see-that-everyday sight waiting to be beheld?

The next stretch of road saw me enjoy some wonderful visiting.  My eyes didn’t see how it happened, but the next time I looked out my window, all traces of green had vanished and been replaced by desert as far as one could see.  Sometime after noon, we arrived on the outskirts of Palmyra, the most eastern point on our itinerary.  A decent lunch preceded the main course of the day—the ruins of ancient Palmyra.

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Departing early once again, we were told that it would take nearly four hours to arrive at the outskirts of Aleppo, and our first stop: The mountain of Simeon Stylite.  Last year in Turkey, I visited the site associated with Simeon Stylite, the younger.  Today was the site of his father (a spiritual reference rather than a biological one).

To appreciate the bizarre nature of these figures, my post from last year would likely help.

This led us into a discussion of desert spirituality and how it might speak to the church today.

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Any visit to Damascus would be incomplete without a stroll down Straight Street, so we began our morning with it.  In Acts 9, the home of Ananias was found here.  Today, it’s home to every church that can squeeze in, with boulevards containing stones excavated from the Roman-era road.  In other words, the streetside gardens contain rocks from “Paul’s Straight Street”.

Our primary stop was just off Straight Street, at a church marking the site of the home of Ananias.  The fact that the story of Acts 9 takes us to Judas’ house, as opposed to Ananias’, seems misplaced, but the spot commemorated Ananias’ place in Saul’s awakening, all the same.

In my mind, this is when the trip began.

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I confess that this trip has started in a fog for me.  Poor sleeping on the planes, along with a ten-hour layover in London’s Heathrow airport had me arriving to Damascus fairly wiped.  We reached our hotel at 6 AM, after a largely sleepless night that had followed another night spent in a plane seat.  We were given four hours to clean up, eat up, and rest up.  Then our day began.

Damascus is a city of 7 million permanent residents, along with 2 million “guests”, refugees from the West Bank and from Iraq.  As a city of that size and one of the major centers of the Arab Middle East (along with Cairo and Istanbul), one could spend a week touring Damascus’ sights—we had one day!

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