- Okay. And what are these? - The thermometer and the voltmeter. - Hmmm. And what do you have in this pocket? - My car and apartment keys, see? - Good. What about this one? - My mobile. - Let's have it. He was already holding the satellite phone, my digital camera and Freitag's miserable map of Syria. Fortunately I forgot the GPS at home, otherwise things could get even less pleasant. - Turn the bike around and let's go to see the commander. The guard that was standing a couple of metres away all through the inspection with a polished bayonet on a ready-to-shoot gun stepped one step back, the head of guards jumped on the back seat and we hurried off to the base with the front wheel in the air.
The morning was rainy and windy and I just couldn't get out of bed. All noon I was drowsily listening to Friday preaches coming from the surrounding minarets, while a strong wind was howling from the courtyard. The wind chased the clouds away, the sun began to shine and soon I brought my freezing neighbour back in front of his dry cleaner’s – he was excited – and headed north myself. There is no end to suburbs, luckily there's a sandy verge all the way along the highway, where the tyres are spared. At 100 km/h I don't even feel the wind in my back anymore.
I had enough of the road and after 30 km I head to the field. My eye catches a neat hill and I decide to climb it. Rocks, big stones, dirt. Not unusual for our conditions, pretty similar to a tour in the karst. Side wind makes any progress difficult because the gusts are throwing me off balance. And the more I lift myself from the seat, the bigger the resistance is. While I'm preparing for the first photo shoot, the wind even overturns the KTM. I go up hill and down dale and discover an excellent cross track. It could be improved, but I memorise the location and go for a couple of circles. Wow, there are even whoops. Actually, it's tank trenches. But the polygon looks deserted and I'm not too worried. I continue on an excellent winding cart track, where there are big things dug in on both sides of the road, covered with canvas covers. Oops. In the end I turn left to the asphalt and just around the curve I see barracks with a thick rope stretched across the road. The guard looked gloomily, he pointed with his gun where I could leave the bike and told me to wait. He didn't let me off the war territory.
The higher the rank of the officer that talked to me, the more silly he found all this. The barracks commanderwasn't even interested in the photos on my digital camera anymore. It was also clear to him that I carried a satellite phone besides the normal one on field with me, just in case, and he understood that the notions “motorbike” and “sports” can in fact co-exist. I also wasn't marking “strategic locations” on the map of Libya. The first thing everybody here wants to know is if I'm an American. Including the neighbours. They somehow seem content after hearing the answer.
Of course, they rummaged through my bag and went through all my pockets – I cursed the fact that I had about half of all the money I brought from Slovenia on me, but they weren't interested in the wallet. Interesting, but neither did they care about the passport with my identity and the visa. In the meantime children were toying with the bike: when I came back to it, it was in gear, the indicator was on, the back footrests were stretched, the thermo-voltmeter was torn out, but I was free. Later on I found a polygon suitable for today's exercise and in the afternoon I returned to Damascus, through all the rubbish dumps, content. But it's going to be tricky finding a suitable terrain – not even the army knew where I could look. Knowing that in the surface nine times bigger than Slovenia there's 17 million inhabitants, that the country’s birth-rate is among the highest, that the length of national service is two and a half years, and that more than a half of the state budget goes to defence, I realize it's going to be difficult – at least around Damascus – to find a piece of land off-road that won't be military property. There's roughly a good 30 km to Damascus from the territory that their neighbours on the southwest occupied 31 years ago. On the west there's Lebanon, which is full of Syrian army that went there to help in the civil war, and later on forgot to come back. On the north there's Turkey which is accusing Syria of supporting the Kurds and with its damns every now and then reduces the flow of the Euphrates river, the main Syrian water supply and the main electricity potential (the enormous damm of the El-Asad lake is the main source of the country’s electricity), and on the east there's Iraq, that they turned their back on in 1990, and got a generous reward for it from uncle Shrub. They did use some of the money to improve the infrastructure, but most of it once again went to defence. With the kind of neighbours they have here, showing their teeth constantly is probably necessary. The only ones harmless around here are the Jordanians, who live off tourism and American support, but that is also why occasionally they have to clench their teeth and let Iraqi “tourists” inside the country as well, who the services of the “greatest democracy of the world” can work onwith no regard of their laws (and unfortunately also the laws of the Geneva Convention – at least that's what I hear and where there's smoke there's usually fire).
It's pretty nice here. You step out of the apartment and only see smiling faces that greet you and wish you a pleasant stay among them. There's practically no criminal, I feel extremely safe. And today when I was pushing my motorbike through the gates, narrower than the steering-bar, after coming back, a passer-by immediately jumped up and helped me lift it across the threshold. Nice. Today the temperature rose despite the wind (it was so strong I was holding the bike pretty inclined at a 100 km/h practically the whole way back to Damascus – the tyres will only be worn out on the left side). The clouds have been blown away and the sun came out, so we could savour a 12°C.
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