From Souk to Souk (15 page)

‘Where are you from
?' they called, but I just smiled in return, knowing that if I took the bait of answering a question I would be stuck in discussion for at least twenty minutes and that a friendly conversation would inevitably turn into an interminable sales pitch from which it would be difficult to escape. Then, as I approached a small crossroads of paths in the cotton souk, a boy, perhaps ten years old, scuttled past the rolls of brightly coloured fabric stacked against the stalls. It was his paper-white hair that caught my eye: he was another albino. I can count on one hand the number of albinos I have seen in my life, so to see two in one afternoon was extraordinary. I wondered if he was the son of the soap merchant's friend.

Eventually, the endless displays of clothing, household goods, dried foods and toiletries lost their charm and what had started out as an exotic feast for the eyes gradually metamorphosed into a prison of endless tunnels of polyester fabric and gaudy plastic. I decided to leave, but no matter which direction I took there seemed to be no way out, just more passages, more people, more hands holding out wares, and an endless chorus of sales pitches. As I remembered reading that the souk's passages ran to some thirteen kilometres, my chest started to feel tight with claustrophobia bordering on panic. Suddenly, I turned and saw daylight beyond a group of silhouettes drifting at the end of a passage. Once outside, I drank in the delicious autumn air before strolling, relieved, to the modern area of the city.

It was dusty and noisy, busy and, in parts, crowded. My throat was dry and the city air, which only moments ago had provided a welcome respite to the suffocating atmosphere of the bazaar, was now revealing itself as a warm, gaseous soup of exhaust fumes. I stopped for a drink at one of the pavement cafés and made myself comfortable on a plastic chair that had once been white. I watched the passers-by going about their daily business, carrying bags of shopping, talking to their children, rushing to appointments of which I knew nothing: I was an observer of life here, not an actor in it. The people I saw around me were the descendants of those who had inhabited the city in centuries past, of those who had conquered it, and of those who had passed through. As I sat sipping my iced mulberry juice or
sharab al toot
, I was struck that in the course of half an hour I had seen half a dozen red- or ginger-haired men. Even in Europe, I would not have expected to see so many. Perhaps the women of Aleppo also counted many redheads among their number, but, as most had their hair covered, it was impossible to be sure, although I thought it likely. After all, red hair is not gender-specific. I began to speculate as to the origin of the gene that was clearly so well established here and wondered if it were a trait left by the crusaders. Even if the Europeans had not managed to conquer the city, they had roamed the area, and no doubt sought to keep themselves amused. But, even more bizarrely, I saw another albino, a man in his thirties, his ghostlike features clearly visible from afar. As he came nearer, I tried not to stare: he had no way of knowing he was the third of his kind I had seen that day. Why there were so many in Aleppo was even more of a mystery than the origin of the city's redheads.

I decided to ask Nazim at the hotel. Seated at his desk in his small, simply furnished office he cut a handsome figure with his designer stubble, perfect smile and flawlessly ironed white shirt. The smile remained on his face, but, as I spoke, his eyes could not conceal a distinct change, an almost imperceptible transition from disconcerting to disingenuous. He twirled his pen in his hairy fingers while politely giving answers that had no bearing whatsoever on my questions, even when, thinking I had not been clear, I repeated them. Finally, putting the pen on the desk, he leant back in his chair, folded his hands in his lap and said he hoped I was enjoying my stay in the city. I was intrigued: there was no doubt about him having understood, but, clearly, he was not about to enlighten me.

The next day, I continued my exploration of the city, returning with almost masochistic curiosity to the sprawling souk. The second time round, it had an air of familiarity, the overbearing atmosphere of the day before having now evaporated. If I had tried to find him it would have been impossible to do so in the perplexing maze of passages, but, after wandering about for half an hour, I suddenly found myself just a few paces from the stall owned by the titian-haired scarf seller. His eyes lit up the moment he saw me. He greeted me as his friend and, rejoicing that I had returned, hurriedly reached for what he described as a ‘beautiful, genuine pashmina scarf'.

Somewhat reluctantly, I walked across to where the happy salesman was busy unfurling an intricately patterned foulard in rich hues of burgundy, red and tan. He proudly flicked it over to reveal the reverse, giving repeated assurances of its quality. I examined it, not sensing any great urge to splash out and turning it this way and that with a hint of affected disdain. The scarf seller let it be known that he would make me a special price and asked how much I wanted to pay. As little as possible, I told him, not untruthfully. I put down the scarf and let my eyes wander indifferently to the curtains of others that lined the small stand. He asked me where I was from. Curiosity got the better of me. I decided to risk causing offence and asked him the same, saying that his blue eyes and red hair seemed unusual for the Middle East. He looked at me for a moment, evidently nonplussed, before saying he was from Aleppo, while he opened out another scarf and held it towards me.

Raising my eyebrows, I explained that he looked as if he was from Northern Europe and that I had been surprised by how many people I had seen in the city with red hair.

He glanced across to his dark-haired countryman on the stand diagonally opposite who, out of the corner of my eye, I could see was following our conversation with interest. He told me his hair colour was quite common in Syria, including in Damascus. When I countered that Arabs had dark hair, he said some people thought it came from the Kazakhs brought to the region many centuries ago as slaves. I speculated it might come from the crusaders, but he shrugged and did his best to turn my attention to a midnight blue and emerald scarf he was unfolding.

I preferred the first one and, after some gentle haggling, we agreed on a price. As the stallholder was folding my purchase and slipping it into a thin, blue plastic bag, I decided I would try once more and asked him about the albinos. For a moment, he did not react and seemed to be considering his answer. Then, handing me the bag, he said nobody knew where they were from, adding, after a brief pause, that they were special.

I said goodbye to the titian-haired stallholder, sensing he was relieved that the conversation was over and hearing as I walked away the man opposite say something to him in Arabic. I was now a proud owner of a smart scarf, as well as a bar of soap fit for a queen. Aleppo's souk might not be aimed at tourists, but, among all the everyday articles, there are still enough little gems for the visitor to discover.

***

I later read that the Mamluks who governed Aleppo in medieval times were, like the Kazakhs, originally brought as slaves, in their case from Circassia, a land in the Caucasus region. The Circassians were known for their red hair; indeed, in the fourteenth century a red-haired Mamluk even became Sultan of Cairo. Was my scarf seller a descendant of one of these slave warriors who rose to become a politically important caste, I wondered? Or did his origins perhaps lie with the crusaders after all? I contemplated what they would have thought had they known that the product of their loins would still be visible in the city centuries later. They failed to take the citadel, they failed to take the city, and their names are mostly forgotten, but could it be that in twenty-first-century Aleppo the genes of at least some of them are here for everyone to see?

As for the albinos, the puzzle remains. I have searched for clues about them, but to no avail. I have many memories of the city, including vivid recollections of the impressive citadel and the famous souk, but what has stayed in my mind most is the mystery of its white-haired inhabitants, carriers of a rare recessive gene. It seems nobody I know who has been to Aleppo has ever seen an albino there, let alone heard anything about their origin. Perhaps among those four hundred or so generations they could trace their genesis back to a single ancestor who, with his or her rare pigmentation, could well have been regarded with superstition or persecuted by their fellows. It is a strange immortality, but one that has outlived many of the grander attempts to be remembered by those who have passed through this city over the centuries.

The fisherman finished sorting the nets of the small wooden boat moored in the harbour, his bronzed skin covering the sort of lean muscle that comes only from many years' hard work. The heat of the Levantine day ebbed away as the sun drifted towards the horizon, turning the glistening sea copper and gold. To the east, sculpted hills basked in the last magical rays of the Canaanite sun goddess
Shapash
before slowly becoming silhouettes against the night sky. Oil lamps were starting to burn in the stone houses that lined the shore and bats fluttered, tiny shadows in the sky. Night would soon envelop the fisherman's world until
Shahar
, the god of dawn, summoned a new day and the dazzling orb rose again. Each morning, the fisherman took his boat out to sea whilst in the fields his neighbours tended their crops and in the market merchants sold wares brought on ships from lands across the water and from cities along the coast whose names he knew, but that he had never visited. Others laboured under the burning sun to load the same boats with prized cedar wood, fragrant source of the town's wealth, brought down from the mountains. Once done with his nets and boat, the fisherman would return to his modest home where his wife would be preparing a simple meal and tending to the children. In his world, the universe was created and ruled by a pantheon of gods whose representatives on Earth, the priests, determined how the fisherman and his fellow townsmen led their lives. The settlement in which he lived, with its sheltering harbour surrounded by fertile soils, had already been inhabited for thousands of years and, as far as he knew, life there had always been the same. Did he, as he cleaned his nets, ever think about the future, I wonder, or contemplate how his world, this city state on the coast, might look a few thousand years hence, just as at this very moment I am trying to imagine what it looked like when he lived here?

I am sitting on the remains of a stone wall that overlooks the sea, trying to envisage how Byblos appeared all those years ago. The fisherman of my imagination would scarcely recognise it today: only the sparkling Mediterranean and the outline of the hills behind me would be familiar. The rest, the mass of buildings pockmarking the countryside, the roads, the
autoroute
, would be bewildering; the cars, radios and mobile phones terrifying. And yet, as I contemplate the human life that has endured for millennia on this spot, I still feel there is a strong link to the past, that much of life here, when shorn of its modern trimmings and reduced to the essentials, is not so different from that of all those centuries ago. The small stone buildings nestling round the harbour, the quaint streets and the remains of the crusader castle perched on the little hill rising up from the shore bestow on Byblos a special atmosphere. Yet perhaps it is simply the timelessness of the sea itself that gives me the sensation of being more connected here to past worlds than in the great cities of the region for, despite their impressive buildings and illustrious histories, the metropolises of the Middle East are in many ways as modern as those anywhere. Even if everything else has changed, I know that the view of the sunset over the sea is one that I can share with my imaginary fisherman and that all the people who lived here in the course of a century of centuries also enjoyed.

As I sit on the warm stone looking out across the water, I reflect on the day that is drawing to a close. I drove up from Beirut late morning with Paco, the Spanish friend with whom I am staying and who has lived in Lebanon for several years. With his black hair and designer stubble, he could almost pass for Lebanese. He had seen an advert for the annual
Marché aux fleurs, oiseaux et produits traditionels
– the flower, bird and traditional products market – and thought it would make a nice day trip for us. Once out of the glittering chaos of the city itself and the usual logjam on the first few kilometres of road heading north, the traffic gradually thinned out. The
autoroute
wove its way along the rugged coastline, running past a landscape much of which was blighted by chaotic urban development. Virtually all of the country's famous cedar forests from which Byblos made its money had long since been felled. Eventually, the concrete gave way to more open views and I felt a flutter of pleasure at having left the oppidan sprawl behind. As we approached the turn off to Byblos, we passed a large roadside poster displaying a front-loading washing machine tied up with a huge red ribbon and, above it, the marketing slogan ‘
Give her something she really wants this Mother's Day
'. It was tempting to see it as ironic: indeed, at home, I could imagine it being used in a comedy sketch to lampoon attitudes from decades past, but here in Lebanon the message was serious, not humorous, and meant to denote generosity, not condescension. Something as banal as an advertisement for a domestic appliance spoke volumes about the society and its true level of economic development behind the polished façade.

We wandered around the old centre, compact and not without a certain magic, despite its touristic nature. The honey-coloured stone of which most of the old town is built exudes warmth and sets off the rich palette of greens provided by the exotic plants that cascade over the walls, and the palms and other trees that rise above the old medieval ramparts. Yet the juxtaposition is not merely of colour, but of texture and age, the rough, static stones standing solemnly whilst the luxuriant creepers and bougainvillea constantly regenerate and decorate the scene with flowers white and shocking pink. In this cramped and chaotic country, Byblos is a corner of Lebanon that is charming, picturesque and, for what is a pushy and ruthless nation, incongruously romantic. You might want to party with Beirut, but it is Byblos you should marry.

Like so many places in the region, this town has, over the course of time, been known by various names. It was the Ancient Greeks who dubbed it
Byblos
, the term they also gave to papyrus as so much of it was shipped from here; the Greek
biblion
, meaning book, has the same origin and gave us the word Bible. Today, the road signs mark Byblos as Jbeil, an Arabic word derived from the Canaanite Gebal.

We stopped for a drink at one of the cafés that line the pedestrianised area of the old centre and spent a while watching the world go by. As Paco recounted an anecdote about his evacuation by the French navy during the Israeli bombardment of 2006, I found my attention unwittingly caught by the
beau monde
strolling past, chatting and explaining, discussing and gesturing. How long, I wondered, had the women spent applying their make-up and doing their hair to perfect the magazine-cover look? And how many weeks, months, years had the men worked out to acquire the V-shaped torsos that were squeezed into body-hugging T-shirts? I smiled inwardly at their devotion to the aesthetic: modesty is an alien concept in this country. The people are proud of their roots as Phoenicians, the name bestowed by the Greeks on the renowned seafarers and traders of ancient Canaan, whose sharp business skills have been passed down throughout the generations and now seem to be almost a genetic trait of every Lebanese.

‘
Oye, guapo
, are you listening to me?' laughed Paco, poking me firmly on the arm.

‘Of course,' I replied, only half truthfully. ‘There is just so much to see here.'

Opposite the café, the modest dimensions of the Place de l'Unesco had been given over to the colourful market. Potted and bedding plants were set out on the stone paving in table-sized rectangles, some shaded from the sun by large white parasols. With Mother's Day less than twenty-four hours away, the timing was perfect. People milled along the pathways between the densely-packed rows of tulips, pansies, begonias and hydrangeas, surveying the specimens. A
dame d'un certain âge
, elegant in perfectly pressed slacks, a light pullover draped over her bony shoulders, tried to retain her husband's attention while she discussed a parlour palm, her jewellery glistening in the sun as she gently examined the fronds. A little further on, a young couple carefully picked out geraniums while their two small children squabbled over a teddy bear. Paco and I finished our coffees and meandered over to the little market to take a closer look. The scent of rosemary and lavender danced alongside heady oriental perfumes and cigarette smoke, while Arabic and French wove together seamlessly in the conversations around us. An earnest-looking young man behind a table with jars of honey and sachets of dried herbs was talking to a woman as she inspected one of the pots. I wondered if he realised that his polo shirt was almost Tyrian purple, the colour of the dye obtained from sea snails, once worth its weight in silver and from which his ancestors made their fortune supplying the elites of Greece and Rome. He looked at us as we walked past, his face warming with a familiar smile, his regard lingering a moment too long. We made our way slowly round the market till we came to a stall set up with oil paintings of local scenes and buildings like those around us. A portrait of an old woman, seemingly local and cheerful in her beige headscarf, looked copied from a photograph. The forty-something artist, in white shirt and jeans, hovered by the canvases with contrived indifference, his dark sunglasses veiling his true thoughts. We paused to look at the limited collection before continuing, casually, on our way.

Paco suggested we go to the souk and, taking my arm, led me through a stone passageway that opened out onto a carefully renovated street lined with single-storey shops. The souk looked more like a stage set than a traditional Middle Eastern bazaar: spotless paving stones and decorative cobbles ran between the two rows of improbably tidy shops with old-fashioned lanterns hanging from their wide eaves. We walked up one side and back down the other, perusing the souvenirs: postcards, Lebanese flags, mugs, rainbow windmills for children and the ubiquitous scarves in any colour one could think of. Stopping to inspect a display of watercolours of the harbour and town, Paco asked me if I wanted to buy anything. I shook my head and smiled. We walked on, briefly entering a bookshop and a dimly-lit store peddling a few tatty and overpriced lithographs of local scenes, nothing I felt compelled to add to my modest collection back home. Our last stop was a place selling fossils – fishes and shrimps caught forever in slices of stone. It seemed a strange spot for such a shop, its ancient rocks a stark contrast to the touristic junk for sale elsewhere in the street. Ironically for a town once one of the great commercial centres of the world, today Byblos' souk is a souk only in name, a mere pastiche through which urbane Beirutis and cautious tourists can wander without worrying about the risk of seeing anything real.

Before long, we reached the end and, strolling through another covered passageway, found ourselves in a small square with a patch of emerald green grass in its centre. A short distance away to the south, the twelfth-century crusader castle stood on a modest rise, its thick walls designed to keep out attackers now but a cultural highlight for sightseers. Yet, despite its impressive ramparts and imposing castle, Giblet, as the Crusaders called Byblos, fell first in 1187 to Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and then to the warrior-sultan Baybars less than a century later, just two of the many invasions and conquests the town has seen since it was first settled in Neolithic times. We headed towards the citadel and the entrance to the archaeological site, beyond which lay the ruins of millennia of human occupation.

A row of half a dozen pillars, resurrected from among the dust and scraggy oleander bushes and topped with eroded Corinthian capitals, are among the few substantial remains of what was once ancient Byblos. It was here, over 3,500 years ago, that the Phoenicians, needing to keep track of all the goods they traded, invented the first
abjad
or consonant-based alphabet. All Western alphabets are derived from their creation. The first two letters represented ‘ox' and ‘house' respectively, which, when translated into Greek, evolved to become alpha and beta. The original Phoenician ‘
aleph
' is still today the name of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and, of course, beta lives on in both the Arabic and Hebrew words for house, ‘
beit
'. That this relatively little-known town is the source of one of the most basic elements of our modern world is testified to by UNESCO registering the Phoenician alphabet as part of the documentary heritage of humankind, its importance transcending the boundaries of time and culture.

As we wandered between the low walls and random stones, I found it difficult to imagine how the place must have looked in antiquity. Where once high priests had made offerings and young wives had baked bread, gently lilting grass and meadow flowers now grew; where before sweating soldiers had marched and wily merchants had haggled over prices, today thorny shrubs and verdant palms held sway. Ironically, if nowadays the inhabitants of yore would scarcely be able to identify the ruins of their town's once impressive stone buildings, they would probably recognise the delicate yellow and white blooms that soak up the sun. The lavish public architecture of this once great trading town had proven less enduring than the fragile flowers of the field. I paused to sit on a round stone, perhaps the vestiges of a column from a magnificent palace, and looked out at the Mediterranean, its waters sparkling in the spring sunshine. I watched Paco's slight figure as he wandered slowly across the site, his thoughts elsewhere. The Phoenicians settled in his country, too: his distant ancestors might once have trodden the same path along which he now picked his way, texting a message in an alphabet that had its origins in this very place.

After a while, we returned to the square in front of the castle before walking through another passageway in the thick medieval fortifications. We emerged to find ourselves in a sloping alley lined on both sides with thin, upright willows growing so close to the rough walls as to be touching them and forming an arched canopy of gentle branches, wispy fingers diffusing the sunlight that fell on to the path.