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When Scott C. Davis, ’70, was a senior at
Stanford, he climbed a new route up Yosemite’s
El Capitan. Seventeen years later, he sought a challenge
“which would equal in its own way the summits
of my youth.” He put his construction business
on hold and spent three months in Syria, a place he
knew next to nothing about. His encounters then and
in 2001—unnerving, hilarious, uplifting, ironic—put
a human face on an enigmatic nation and unveiled a surprising
affection for Americans and their culture, as his book
The Road from Damascus reveals.
november 1987. I caught
a bus to the village of Afrin, looking for the soul
of the Syrian people in the red earth of the countryside—an
embarrassing, romantic notion, I admit. Walking up the
main street, I peered through doorways to see men weaving
rugs on ancient looms made from poles and twisted ropes.
When I passed a tiny candy shop, the proprietor, a big
beefy guy of about 30, blocked my path and made a violent
hacking motion.
“Police,” he said. “I am police.”
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DAMASCUS SKYLINE: A view from
Bab Touma, the old Christian Quarter, in 2001.
Courtesy Scott C. Davis |
The secret police, or mukhabarat, had made
me tense, weary and nauseated since my first hour in
Syria. This time, however, I was not entirely convinced.
“I am police. I can throw you in the prison and
slap you around, and you be crying for mercy,”
the man said, half in English, half in pantomime.
I handed him my passport, whereupon he motioned me
into his store and blocked my exit. I was his prisoner.
He read my passport carefully, though I noticed he was
holding it upside down and did not seem to have a weapon.
When he finished, he began to interrogate me. “Who
do you come to see?” he said. “Names! Names!”
Since the secret police in Syria did not wear uniforms,
I could not be sure he was not one of them. But it occurred
to me that the mukhabarat, if nothing else,
had a sense of dignity. A member of the mukhabarat
never would go undercover as a mere candy store operator.
I grabbed my documents, wormed my way past my captor,
and bid him adieu. Just then a man on a motorcycle pulled
up.
“Police,” he said. “I am the police.”
He did not have a weapon, either.
“You can’t be the police,” I said
and pointed at the big guy from the candy store. “He’s
the police.” I looked over at the women and children
crowding around us. “Are all of you police?”
I was getting tired of this, and the crowd was curious,
not terrified, so I knew that these guys were impostors.
I began to leave. Then the man ordered me to get on
the back of his motorbike so that he could be a good
host and give me a tour. “These guys are the detritus
at the bottom of a police state,” I thought. “When
do they get to exercise power? Only when a hapless tourist
stumbles along.” I declined the tour and kept
walking. I needed to get on the bus back to Aleppo before
anyone else decided to detain me.
“Qiff! Qiff!” I heard. Stop! Stop!
Two men with AK-47s blocked my path. One was tall and
angry-looking and seemed to be in charge. He made the
hacking motion. I handed over my passport and prepared
to wait while he examined it. But he slipped it into
his pocket. “Mukhabarat in a hurry,”
I thought. “An ominous development.”
“Idkhil al-sayyarah,” my captor
ordered. Get in the truck.
His companion motioned with his machine gun toward
their Toyota pickup. I was pretty sure that these guys
did not run a candy store. We drove a few blocks and
went into an unmarked building, passing dark cells with
brown stains—bloodstains? —on the walls
and floors. The two men led me to an office, then stood
to each side with military precision and looked straight
ahead, saying nothing, as they presented their captive,
a dangerous spy from America.
I faced a gray steel desk. Behind it was a man with
a shaved head. He sighed and looked at me.
“How many friends you have in Afrin?” the
headman asked. “Names! Please, it will be easier
if you give me the names.”
This was a great chance to repay the candy store owner
for his hospitality, but I did not have his name.
“Tell us, why are you here in Afrin?”
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DAY ONE: Davis arrives at the
Al-Boustan hotel in Damascus on his first visit
to Syria.
Courtesy Scott C. Davis |
“I came to look at the scenery,” I said.
The tall guy puckered his lips and made a sound of disgust.
I was his catch, and now I was turning out to be not
much of a prize. I felt that I had let him down.
The mukhabarat were recruited from Syria’s
traditional underclass. They had power, but little respect.
So their dealings with an American became a way of asserting
status. I needed to show them that I took them seriously.
I needed to feed them a flagrant lie. My statement was
pedestrian, an insult to their rujoolah, their
manhood, but I could think of nothing better.
The headman sighed once more. He could wait no longer.
He placed my passport in an envelope, which he licked,
sealed and placed on the table. And now for more serious
business. His face became rigid. He stood and spoke
rapid lines to my captors, who stiffened at their posts.
“It’s happening,” I thought. He strode
across the room, closed the door behind him. I was alone
with two silent men and their automatic rifles.
I heard a scratching and bumping at the door. “It’s
the headman,” I thought, “returning with
some kind of paraphernalia.” I decided to run.
I wanted to be outside where there were witnesses, but
my captors grimaced and fingered their weapons, and
it struck me that they were waiting for an excuse, that
they wanted me to make a move. Then the door swung open,
and it was the headman, his face red and dropping sweat,
and I tensed and started to move, but those weapons!
I slumped back in my chair, then heard a clattering
noise and looked up. The headman carried—what
was this?—a tray with four small teacups and a
steaming samovar. He set it on his desk and looked at
me with a slight smile. “Chai?”
he asked.
After our tea party the headman explained that my offense
was serious and I would have to be interrogated at police
headquarters in Aleppo. I still didn’t know what
my offense was, but decided to go along with the program.
Driving to town in a new Suzuki, we listened to a station
that broadcast Western music. “This,” said
the announcer, “is the Voice of America.”
At the immense concrete headquarters I was tortured
by guards who forced me to sit alone and watch Lassie
reruns on TV. My suffering only increased when I considered
that the guards thought they were being hospitable.
At last, just as Lassie was swimming to retrieve the
canoe paddle before her master was swept over a waterfall,
the chief inquisitor called.
I went into another room and sat in a straight-backed
chair. “Ah, you are from Washington,” the
inquisitor began. “My brother is in Washington.
Two months ago he got his green card. Here in Aleppo
we have a party to celebrate, the whole family.”
He seemed curious about one thing. “Why didn’t
your wife come with you?” he asked.
“I didn’t think she’d like the way
you treat tourists,” I said.
The guy winced, and tears came to his eyes. He turned
away and dabbed with a handkerchief. Great. So now I
felt guilty for having hurt the feelings of the secret
police.
“I’ll bring her next time,” I said.
“She’s never seen anything like this country.
The hospitality of Syrians has been quite unusual.”
With these words my inquisitor recovered his composure
enough to jot down my answers to a dozen routine questions.
Yet something still blocked my release: I would have
to pass a more rigorous exam before the director.
An hour later, a short, fierce-looking man in a blue
suit arrived, examined the documents and explained that
in a situation this serious, justice could not be obtained
through normal procedures.
“You see this coin,” he said as he held
a half-lira piece for me to inspect. One side had an
eagle, the other the number 50. “I will flip,
you call.”
The coin came up eagle for me three out of five, and
I was free to go. |
