The Cave Church and the Citadel

I am long overdue for telling you about my stories in Syria.

So here I go.

They call it Rough Cilicia for a reason. It is mid October, and we are finally on our way to our week-long study tour in Syria. It will be our first time outside of Turkey since our arrival. But the journey starts with a two-day bus ride and an extended stop in Antakya, or the ancient Antioch, Turkey. As we leave Alanya in the bus we affectionately call the Dixie Cup or the Love Bus (thanks to its elaborate interior decorations of stuffed teddy bears and heart-shaped pillows), we head along the coast to the West, driving through cities we just learned for our Urban Geographies quiz. The bus is full of excitement and voices, when it suddenly falls silent and people snap asleep. But their slumber does not last for very long. Within two hours, we enter Rough Cilicia, or the mountainous region along the Southwest coast of Turkey. The bus begins its ascent into the sky, crawling up the steep incline and hugging to the mountainside on every v-shaped curve. We either try to do our class readings to avoid looking out the window or avoid them altogether to prevent car-sickness. Oh, but the view! This climb can only be irony at its greatest. Despite the immense discomfort in our tiny Dixie Cup, the pine-studded mountains, rocky cliffs jutting out into the sea, and the intense, pure blue of the Mediterranean Sea are so unbelievably gorgeous. Needless to say, we are thrilled when the bus rolls into our first rest and academic spot: the now dilapidated ruins of Anamur, which was once a peripheral city of the Roman Empire.

We spend a few hours scrambling through the old bathhouse and fresco-adorned tombs built into the mountains. It is the first time since Istanbul that we see the ruins of a Christian church and a painting of Jesus and Gabriel on the curved ceilings of the tombs. The tombs were built with courtyards so that families could sit and share meals just beyond the resting places of those who had left this life. Down by the sea, just beyond the ruins, the beaches overflow with pebbles. The pebbles have been shaped into perfect circles and ovals by the lapping water, sparkling with grey and white or green, some streaked with red. I wonder how much the rocks have passively witnessed, how much the sea has seen.

Getting back on the bus, we finally make it through Rough Cilicia. As night falls, we arrive in Antakya, or Antioch, where we will spend two nights. Antioch, once the seat of the Seleucid Empire in the centuries before Christ, was annexed to Rome in 64 BC. According to some, it held as much importance in the ancient world as Rome, Alexandria, and Constantinople as it became the third largest city in the Roman Empire. Housing more than half a million people in its height, it boasted the longest colonnaded street of its time and all the amenities, like bathhouses and aqueducts, common to the Roman city layout. Because of its location (today located just shy of the border of Syria), it fostered religious and ethnic diversity and was an important stop on the Silk Road. It also played an influential role in early Christianity. Cited in Acts 11:26, the name ‘Christian’ was first used in Antioch. Antioch was also briefly home to Peter and Paul. The fall of the Roman Empire, the impact of devastating earthquakes, and repeated Arab attacks eventually led the city into decline. In the last century, it has been a point of contestation. After World War I it was included in France’s mandate of Syria, but because of a popular referendum (in which not everyone, like Syria and several inhabitants in what is now called Antakya, was in agreement) it became part of Turkey before 1940. The city, due to its religious diversity, has recently been celebrated and used as an example of multiculturalism within Turkey; however, the actual statistics call into question the validity of this claim. For example, the Catholic community amounts to around 80 people, and the Jewish community only has 35 members still residing in Antakya. Regardless, it is interesting and significant that the city has chosen religious tolerance as its marketing strategy and point of leverage. It shows that multiculturalism is either valued by the city or recognized as an asset in domestic and international relations. It is also worth noting how the city defines multiculturalism. From my American perspective, I often insert diversity into the ‘melting pot’ model, wherein multiculturalism encourages a blending and appreciation of cultures. Some individuals that we talked to in Antakya, however, especially in the older generation, saw it as a ‘mosaic,’ or a situation in which distinct religious groups lived together and complemented one another, but did not mix. The younger generation, with increased interaction and marriages across religious lines, has begun to challenge the inflexibility of this mold.

It is our first morning in Antakya, and I have the chance to do something I never thought I would be able to do. It is my turn for the on-sight presentation assigned in our Urban Geographies class, and my topic (as you can probably tell from the very lengthy paragraph above) is the history and multicultural identity of Antakya. Our professor normally allows us to choose where we give our presentation to the class on school field trips, depending on the day’s itinerary. Today, I get to present in a rock cave, one of the first churches where Paul and Peter are said to have preached to the early Christians. This is something I will always remember.

Later, we climb to a castle on a mountain overlooking Antakya, walk through a museum of mosaics, and either visit or pass by the only Catholic church, Greek Orthodox church, synagogue, and Protestant church, which was founded by Korean missionaries, and also see the courtyard of a mosque. I like Antakya. It’s not the ancient city it once was, but there is something real about it, something bustling. It’s lacking the tourist façade that so many other destinations we have visited put up. The streets are crowded with young people and I notice some quirks that make me smile, like a man walking in a crosswalk holding a bouquet of at least fifty colorful balloons trailing into the sky. The next day, we begin again to Syria.

To reach Syria we pass through the checkpoint on the Turkish-Syrian border, drive through No-Man’s Land, and go through customs. The first three nights we spend in Aleppo, and the next two in Damascus. The road signs are now in Arabic, and as we move slightly inland from the sea, the topography gradually becomes more desolate. The one thing that stands out most to me from our time in Aleppo is the Citadel. Positioned above the city amongst shops and hotels and neighborhoods, its dominance demands the eye’s attention. The light stone contrasts against the sky, and the inside, so preserved compared to the many Greek and Roman ruins that we had been visiting, is dotted with couples trying to escape the crowded city.

On our third day in Aleppo we drive out of the city’s boundaries to visit a series of dead cities and St. Simeon’s pillar, or the remaining chunk of stone left from the stylite’s residence of more than 30 years in the 5^th century AD.

Unfortunately, a bout of sickness spreads throughout our group mid-week, and so I am not able to participate in some of the Damascus activities. Despite this, my favorite visit during this part of the week is on our drive to Damascus, when we stop in a village in the mountains that is one of the few remaining Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in the world. I spend most of the time sleeping on the bus, but the fact that we are there is hard to grasp. I also love the moment during the drive when we are told to look out the window. On the other side of the mountains is Lebanon. Israel is southwest, and Iraq is beyond the border to the East.

My week in Antakya and Syria was shaped by the historical and modern sites we got to see, the districts and hotels we stayed in, the interactions we were able to have, the mezes we ate, our time on the bus together, and, well, the sickness. A week is by no means enough time to fully know Syria, but it provided me with an exciting introduction to the country. It was an experience that was unique, personal, and formative. For one thing, it stretched my brain’s conception of time. Like Turkey, we were constantly surrounded by antiquity and history. More importantly, it was our first time outside of Turkey since arriving. It was not only a chance to see a country in the region we define as the Middle East, but it also gave me ground to reflect on my time in Turkey, and to compare and contrast.

After all, it’s not every day that you get to walk in Paul’s footsteps, hear Arabic in the bazaar, or look out from the top of a citadel, blazing white and pulsing with the rhythm of the city.