ADL

Revised in October 2006

While working for either Plessey Radar or Plessey Displays (both names existed during my time at Addlestone), I spent about ten months in Syria helping to install an Electronic Warfare system for the Syrian Army.  “Electronic Warfare” is the name given to a system that will allow a country to monitor what electronic signals are being radiated by a prospective, or actual, enemy.  The signals may consist of overheard radio messages that are picked up as a result of the fact that it is near-impossible to prevent radio signals from crossing borders and being received by unwanted ears. These messages are processed by the receiving organisation and used as an intelligence source. There may also be appropriate signals sent the other way.

To my mind the cleverest form of electronic warfare is that used by attacking aircraft to confuse enemy radar.  The American F111 is the most superb system that I know of. When a radar beam is transmitted, the main beam goes in the direction that the dish-antenna is pointing.  But there are side-lobes as well that transmit a lower-power signal.  These side-lobe signals are transmitted at an angle to the main beam.  This effect occurs both for transmission and for reception.  Only one dish is normally used for transmission and reception.  If a strong signal is received by a side-lobe, and a very week signal is received by the main lobe, the appearance to the interrogating radar operator (or machine) is that an aircraft is approaching from a direction other than the true bearing.  To give an example: a bomber is coming in from the north, but the radar suggests that the bomber is approaching from the north-west.  The protecting defences are totally fooled. The electronics in the aircraft is very clever indeed. In fact the F111 is able to fool several ground-radars at one time.  But the Syrian system that I worked on was not this sort of equipment, but a rather more low-level ground-to-ground device.  But it took a lot of high-tech gear, nonetheless.  Computing was then a long way behind what it is now.  The hard disks that I carried back to UK were about two feet across and weighed ten or fifteen pounds each.  Plessey’s big worry was that the Syrian customs would insist on inspecting them and putting sticky fingers on the disk surface. And, of course, this would wreck the disks as the surfaces are terrible fragile.

I think it was a little intervention by the Syrian army that stopped that possible problem when I carried a couple of disks back to the UK at the end of my tour.  Plus a little reminder to the actual erks, that to open the covers would ruin the disks. I hinted that the President would almost certainly get to know if the disks were damaged by Syrian customs.

“If you damage those disks, it is a fair certainty that the President will get to hear about it.  I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes !”  Several times I managed to overcome the Syrian red-tape by having an army officer with me.  The army in Syria was a law unto itself.  And our project was run by a Lieutenant General.  A bit about Generals later.

2        The journey to Heathrow

On the way to Heathrow from my house at 3 Milton Road Hampton on Thursday 30 August 1979, the minibus almost became involved in, what should have been, a very nasty pile-up.  Just north of The Airman pub in Feltham, we were proceeding northward towards the airport, and our driver decided to overtake a slow-moving van in front.  The road is comfortable for two opposite lanes of traffic, but it was not really wide enough to allow a third vehicle to pass safely.  The vehicle we were overtaking was a large van that totally obscured a side road on the left ahead of the van. Our driver was probably unaware that there was a side road, let alone that there was a car in it waiting to turn right.

Our driver pulled out to quickly pass the van  as there was another oncoming vehicle a short distance ahead speeded up by coming down a railway bridge ahead of us.  As he was passing the van in the opposite lane, a car in the side road hidden from us by the van ahead decided to pull out in front of the van to turn right and travel southwards.  How we, the van, and the other car didn’t collide, is a mystery to this day.  The evasive action our driver took, made the minibus come very close to rolling over.  But we got to Heathrow in one piece. Allah was on our side that day.

3        Arriving at Damascus

We flew to Damascus via a short stop in the Lebanon.  The terrain below us as we approached Damascus was true desert.  We could see tracks in the sand but no other sign of life.  The airport we arrived at was the size of a small British regional airport.  I had my first experience of Arabic culture when I walked into the airport building from the aircraft.  I noticed that “the clock” (and there was only one) had stopped.  I was later told by one of the Syrian officers I worked with: “why should that be of any concern, everybody in Damascus has a wrist watch?”

On landing we waited a short while for our luggage to arrive, and as we left the building our luggage was searched very thoroughly.  Why we should be thought of as a likely risk, I didn’t know then.  But their search was thorough!  I later learned from a British Embassy official that the number of listed Britons in Syria comprised more people in prison than people like us working there.  It seems that the luggage search was intent of finding drugs.  We hear about customs in Saudi who look for western girlie magazines, but from later experiences I reckon that Syria is not nearly as prudish as Saudi.

Staying with the airport:  When leaving the country by way of the airport, my luggage was searched prior to going into the building.  Had it been pouring with rain (and it can bucket it down in Syria), my suitcase contents would have got very wet.  Perhaps though,  the searcher would have chosen a more covered spot as he would have got wet too.  At that time, I later discovered, there was a campaign of terrorism against the establishment by some sort of opposition group.

To go past Syrian-Air offices in the heart of the city and find that all the windows had been blown out during the night, indicated to an observer that all was not peace and quiet in Syria then.  The local English-speaking newspaper always avoided publishing news of this sort.  And it was on these sorts of occasion that the foreign newspapers failed to arrive.  But there were three English-speaking radio stations that we could receive:

Israel Radio, Voice of America and BBC World Service.

A strange oddity occurred when I first arrived in Syria.  I had brought with me my portable radio that was tuned to BBC Radio 4 Medium Wave whilst I was in England. When I turned it on in Syria I immediately got a Radio 4 programme.  Investigation showed that the relay station in Cyprus received the BBC on short wave and re-broadcast the World Service on medium wave.  And the World Service often repeats Radio 4 programmes that are likely to be of interest to British ex-pats.

I don’t know if there were any restrictions on Syrians listening to overseas radio, but I expect that those Syrians who could speak English fluently were beyond government censorship of that sort.  Also, to copy World War II Nazi restrictions may well have been counter-productive.  A number of businesses had to maintain contact with Europe to prosper.  I found this when I got a pair of glasses made by a Syrian optician  --  details later.

4        First impressions of Syria

Our first week was spent at a the Hotel Omayad.  I suppose you could classify this as a hotel between zero and one star.  The air-conditioning in the bedrooms had definitely seen better days  There were a couple of 4-star-equivalents in the city, of American origin.  The Syrian general entertained us all for a Christmas meal at one of them.  It was quite noticeable that the suite he used was constructed in a manner that allowed physical security to be maintained before anyone could get to the position where the entertainment took place.  Again, I assume this was to stop an insurgent group from attacking VIPs.  The general was a friend of President Hafez Assad, and I expect that the central slush fund paid for our meal and booze.  Although the general was a Muslim, he wasn’t a stranger to whiskey (it is not forbidden in the Koran).  Hafez has since passed on and his son Bashar is now holding that position in the government.

Our party soon moved out of the Hotel Omayad.  Chris Stone (our team leader) knew his way around the Arab world and he got a local estate agent to show us apartments for let in the city.  The one’s we would liked to have rented were way out of our price range.  But looking at these apartments was an education in itself. Before it became obvious to the estate agent that our price bracket was modest, we were shown huge, garish places with enormous cornices and chandeliers.  One of those that we were shown had an immense lounge with about twenty chairs parked against the walls

Chris explained that middle-class Arabs like to entertain their men friends (the women were always in the background)  After the meal they would retire with cups of Arabic coffee and soft drinks.  They would then discuss politics.  But never venture into criticisms of the ruling regime.  One never knew who worked for the intelligence services.

On meeting an Arab socially, one always enquires about the health of THE FAMILY, never about the health of the WIFE or an older daughter.  I was told that many of the women were real dragons in the house, but they all conformed to the overall social code.

We got thirty pounds a day as expenses from Plessey.  This was paid in local money and worked out at about three hundred Syrian pounds a day  When one got a modestly-price apartment and only ate-out on occasions, one could save quite well.  Chris operated a bank account, and as the money came in from a hard currency area, he could get a Barclays Bank cheque in Sterling payable to our personal names.

At one of the apartments we visited, the agent kept up a conversation with a woman whilst the two of them never actually saw each other because they were on different sides of the entrance door.  He stood one side of a large door and she stood on the other. Our party stood aside and I never saw anything of the woman either.

We finally agreed on a basement flat immediately opposite The Air Force building.  It had no air-conditioning and the evening and night was humid and quite unpleasant.  The Air Force building on the opposite side of a wide road had continual machine-gun toting guards pacing up and down.  At a later date I walked back from the City to my apartment in Mahazherine and passed the Air Force Building.  One of the guards indicated that I was to get off the pavement and walk in the road until I had well cleared the building.  As the building was some distance away behind high railings, I cannot believe that I was a threat because if I had been a suicide bomber, I was obviously not carrying enough explosives to be of any risk to the building.  And suicide bombers were not in vogue then.

On about the fifth evening in this basement flat, I was awoken by having a torch shone in my eyes.  I discovered in the morning that one of our party, Tom Jones, had climbed the gardener’s small ladder kept in the basement garden, to get a breath of air by getting his head up above street level.  This ladder was used by the gardener to gain access to the garden from the street rather than by coming through the basement flat.  What had happened was that a guard across the street had spotted Tom’s head and became suspicious.  I sleep like a corpse and didn’t hear the banging on the outside door. When one of out lot opened the door three machine-gun toting guards marched in to inspect the premises.  One had a torch that woke me by shining it at me

For a foreigner to legally rent an apartment in Syria, the agent was required to take our passport and register us with the security services.  This happened to all of us.

Plessey had a small contingent of telecom engineers in Damascus prior to our arrival. This group had put in several telephone exchanges around the city.  One of this other group was due to return to England quite soon and I discovered this.  I was asked if I would be interested in taking over the fellow’s flat in Mahazherine (the Mayfair of Damascus that was part of embassy-land).  I liked it much better than the roach-infested basement flat opposite the Air Force Building, and I moved in before the other chap had left.

This second-floor flat was half of a floor that was rented by the mother of a cardiologist.  The doctor, who lived on the ground floor, had trained in the USA and met a nurse there and had brought her back to Syria and married her.  They had two sons.  Madam, my landlady, like most elderly educated Syrians only spoke Arabic and French.  If I wanted to talk to the old lady, she would phone down and ask one of the boys to come up and translate.  On the floor where the old lady and I lived, the two flats were separate, but joined by a common wide hallway.  There were two bell-pushes on the landing outside the common front door.

The Plessey outgoing tenant of my half-flat was an arrogant pig.  He used to help himself to my breakfast cereal without a ‘by-your-leave.  I soon discovered a few other unpleasant facets to his character.  His wife and family lived in Ipswich.  When he had left I found a half-written un-sent letter to his wife.  While in Damascus he was knocking off an Argentinean whore who lived locally.  On one occasion she and some others had a party in the flat. Around about midnight a pre-arranged taxi arrived to take the girl home.  The taxi-driver came up the stairs and rang the wrong bell.  Although the bell was in Madam’s flat it would have been heard in ‘my’ flat.  Both Madam and the girl went out to answer the door.  But the whore was wearing nothing but a pair of pants, and not even a brassier.  Madam was not amused.

Before lover-boy left the flat for the airport he talked to me about having to pay a large unexpected bill at Hommes where he had spent several days previously.  He didn’t say what the bill was for.  Hommes is a city in the north of Syria.  When he finally left the flat, it seems that Madam had spotted him leaving and accosted him about the four weeks unpaid rent.  I learnt all this from Sally Kabbarni (the American nurse). I reported this to Chris (our site manager).

Chris passed the information on to the Plessey Syria manager who was in charge of all the telecomms staff.  This chap saw me and asked if I would pay the bill and get a receipt.  He informed me that Plessey frowned on this sort of sharp practice.; it did the image of the company no good at all.  I did as he asked and he reimbursed me later.

I got Sally to do the necessary in providing the receipt.  I imagine that bill went back to where lover-boy was based.  It was the Sally who introduced me to the Asterix comics.  They were translated from the French, and their subject was a tribe of Gauls who were at war with the Roman occupation army.  The translator must have been good too, to get such superb absurdity from French into English.  It wasn’t schoolboy wording, far more sophisticated prose.  I would recommend these comics to anyone who likes a good laugh; they are superb.

The renting of this flat was a private arrangement and no passport formalities were involved.  I became quite good friends with the doctor and Sally.  On one occasion I asked him if I could take him out to a meal at The Sheraton (only ten minutes walk from the flat)  This was a high quality four star hotel.  The entertainment that was often on offer would make any Islamic Mullah go apoplectic.  Bare boobs were one of the more modest features of the showgirls.  Syria doesn’t have a religious police as does Saudi Arabia.  When I went with Sammi Kabarni there was no floor show.  Sammi asked if he could take his eldest boy, and he insisted on paying the bill.  I assume that this was to introduce the lad to a bit of western culture  He also insisted that I have a half bottle of wine, although he and his son only drank Pepsi Cola.  Cocoa Cola is Jewish and taboo in Syria.

5        Meeting a feral cat

There were a lot of stray dogs and cats in Damascus.  Coming back to my flat one evening, I opened the front-garden gate from the pavement and stepped onto the path leading to the front door of the apartment block.  Without any warning I found a cat clawing at my left leg.  The moggy didn’t wait for my reaction and made off before I could react.  Upstairs I found that it had drawn blood.  Rabies is endemic in Syria, and I know enough to be aware that to be infected in the leg is not urgent, but it could be life-threatening.  The  virus travels to the brain via the nervous system.  If you are infected in the neck, treatment is urgent.  The further from the brain, the less-urgent is the treatment.  However, once symptoms are evident, there is no treatment other than simple nursing.

Over fifty per cent of victims die.  The other name of the disease is hydrophobia because the mental state of the victim causes intense aversion to water.

Most home medical books cover the disease superficially.  The next day I reported what happened to Chris Stone.  I told him of my knowledge of the disease.  I said that it was unlikely that I had been infected, but if I had, the situation was serious.  He reported back to Addlestone and they liaised with the Chief Medical man of Plessey.  He arranged for a courier to deliver a vaccination package.  Chris Stone arranged for a hotel booking for the courier, and asked the hotel if they could put the package in their fridge until I picked it up and put it in my flat fridge.  Chris alerted the official W.H.O. doctor in Damascus about me.

Chris told me afterwards he took the courier around the sites in Damascus on the evening of his visit.  The courier told him that he had visited all sorts of exotic places as part of his job, but he never stayed long enough to see the sights.  Damascus is worth visiting.  London, Paris and Rome don’t hold a candle to Damascus when it comes to history.  The Omyad Mosque is a world-renowned site.  You can see where Peter fell off his ass in The Street Called Straight.  You can see the building and the window where John the Baptist was lowered in a basket to escape from his pursuers.  The city wall is largely intact despite it being well over two millennia in age.  Even modern Damascus is fascinating as an Arab city  -- more below.

The W.H.O. doctor spoke English with a slight American accent.  He was very alert to English ways.  It is said one should not make a joke to a foreigner, but he responded superbly to my joke.  Opposite his office was a gents outfitters named ‘Gentleman’.  Outside his office was a sign on a lamp-post pointing to the shop of that name.  In Britain years ago one could see similar signs pointing to a men’s urinal.  I pointed this out to him.  He responded “it doesn’t say ‘gentlemen’ it says ‘Gentleman’ with a capital letter.  He’d obviously visited Britain.

As regards the rabies, I saw the Syrian-based WHO doctor before the package was delivered, and he told me that if it was the ‘old style’ vaccine he would refuse to give it me as the side-effects were so severe that I should be repatriated to the UK before having the injections.  Many people know that the pre-war rabies vaccine had severe side-effects that you could be hospitalised with them, but few people then had heard of the (then) “new” French vaccine.  The doctor told me that he had never met the new vaccine, but had read up on it and it seemed to be reasonably mild.

When it came, I went to him and he gave me the first injection. Like the old vaccine, it is administered to the pit of the stomach.  But the effect was so mild that I affirm that it was less traumatic than the normal tetanus jab.  I returned in a fortnight for the second dose and a month later for the third.  On my return to England, the last two doses were given me by the factory nurse at Addlestone.  The Plessey Chief Medical Man saw me on my return and said “You’ve joined a rather exclusive club”.

Everywhere one went in Damascus, the engineering incompetence of the Arabs was evident.  It’s not that they are any less intelligent than, say, Israelis; I reckon it it’s their religion that holds them back.  Islam was born in the desert among the Bedouin.  In six hundred AD the Bedouins were totally dependant on the weather.  If there was a drought, the goats and camels perished, and so did the people.  This must lead to a fatalist outlook.  If almost any disaster strikes, it is “Allah’s Will”.

It was Allah’s Will that caused a Russian truck (built like a tank) to collide head-on with a bus on the outskirts of Damascus.  I was told that twenty died in the bus, and I saw the remains of the truck at the army camp I worked at.  It was about half its original length.

It’s Allah’s Will

A hundred years ago in Britain, an agreement about any future meeting was suffixed by the Latin words “Deo volente” (God Willing).  The Arabs still use their equivalent in “insh’allah”..  If you got up late and missed an appointment, you are not to blame, it was Allah’s Will.  You can see why the Arabs haven’t prospered.  Not only gross incompetence in mechanical matters abounds everywhere, but the quality of much of their work is immensely shoddy.  I blame this on the fact that standards of quality are so low, that apprentices have no decent standards to follow.

I’ll give a couple of examples at the army camp I was at:

·  An underground communication cable went from a basement room across the wilderness outside to another building about a mile away.  Some of these older-style cables were not totally watertight.  The technique used, was to keep the cable under pressure with dry air being pumped from one end.  The compressor was at our end of the cable.

The compressor ran out of petrol and none was available.  I don’t know how long it was before they got the compressor running again.  But by this time the cable was waterlogged and became unusable.  But once water gets into a cable, it is virtually impossible to get rid of it.

·  The building where our equipment was installed had all of its doorways with a headroom of only about five feet six inches.  I’m close to six feet tall and I had to duck whenever I went through a doorway.  I asked Chris why this was and learnt the reason.  The building was built with no thought of its use.  The various cabinets and consoles we were installing needed a lot of interconnecting cables and no-one thought about cable ducts.  But the Arabs are as inventive as anyone else.  They raised the floor level where the ducts were not, allowing the ducts to be below the new floor level.  The only problem was that the floor was then a foot higher than the original level at the doorways. A similar cockup was found with the air-conditioning.  The army were so slow to pay the original contractor his staged payments, that he went bust.  The army had to finish the job themselves.  Need I say more.

7        A good British vandal would stop the city

Any efficient British vandal could easily close down all the telephones in our area of the city.  Between telephone poles, the wires sagged so severely that one had to watch out so as to not to catch your head against the wires . A stroll at midnight with a pair of wire cutters could have shut down our part of the city.

I once saw a telephone mechanic trace a pair of wires from a first-floor flat to a junction-box on the ground floor of the block..  Most flats were equipped for the family to have a maid.  In every major room there was a three-way electrical plate.  A socket for the mains supply, a socket for the telephone, and a bell-push to summon the maid.  Both sockets were of the pre-war French style.  The only way you could differentiate between the phone socket and the mains socket was by the silk-screened pictogram on the plastic.  And with true Arab-quality, the silk-screening soon rubbed off.  I wonder how many dud telephones there are in Damascus.  Plugging a telephone into the mains means that it doesn’t work again.

As I said before, the Arabs are inventive, so this chap had connected two French plugs back to back so as to feed 220 volt mains down the telephone cable to the junction box in the porch.  He then went downstairs and tested each pair to find which one had 220v mains on it.

I know the Americans are much more blasé about electrical safety than we Brits.  But I think even they would have reservations about this technique.  A slight error would put 220v mains onto someone else’s phone line.

In my own flat I found 400v (three phase supply) behind the ceiling rose.  Power cuts were common, generally one a day for an hour or more.  Another novelty was the refrigerator in the flat.  It was a massive USA model powered through a 220v to 115v transformer.  But the novelty I liked the most was that it was possible to open the door in either direction.  I said the Arabs were inventive, so are the Yanks.  But it was also possible to open the already-opened door from the opposite side to the first opening.  This was one way of removing the door altogether, and it was quite heavy.

8        The Golan Heights

I did have one real adventure while working at the Army camp.  Another part of the Plessey Empire had supplied a specialist type of radio transmitter/receiver that was required to interface with our system.  We had a field scheme on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.  This would be the sort of place where the equipment could be used in the future.  I was involved with connecting up the radios.  One of the Syrian officers must have been detailed to look after us.  I was told very seriously not to go up the hill above ‘that rock’ (a huge boulder that was obvious from below).  If you go any higher than that, you are visible to the Israeli’s.  And you could well get shot at.  And their marksmen are quite good.  I stayed well below the rock in question.

9        Thinking Arabs must be appalled

The thinking Arab must be infuriated at the incompetence of their society compared with that of Israel.  Do you remember the rescue of the passengers when an Israeli aircraft was hijacked to Entebbe in Uganda.  The Israeli equivalent of the SAS launched a successful rescue from mainland Israel.  My look at the map makes it about two thousand miles as the crow flies, and a lot of countries en-route were hostile to Israel, so they couldn’t ask for permission to overfly these countries.  But a lot of Africa has an efficiency quotient on a par with the Arabs  The world took its hat off to the Israelis..  Similarly, the 7-day war in which Israel beat the massed ranks of the Arab world.  I have no time for Israel, but I have to admire their abilities.  It’s true that in the 7-day war the Israelis were buying petrol from the Arabs across the front line.  The Arabs are their own worst enemy.

10      Dress for Europeans

Damascus is a magnificent tourist attraction.  The Omyad mosque caters for European visitors.  Worship in Islam is not as private as it is in Christendom.  Tourist can get quite close The Faithful at prayer.  Slippers are available to visitors as they are required to remove their shoes on entry to a mosque.  Western women are provided for with the issue of an enveloping black shrouds to cover their hair and neck.  I doubt that they would let you in with a mini-skirt, and even in the town you would be at risk of arrest.  But in the town one sees the whole gamut of Arabic dress, from the tabour to the revealing sweaters worn by some of the girl students.  A man too must not show too much bare skin either.  I opened my shirt during a visit to a Roman amphitheatre in Jordan and I got ticked off by Chris Stone.  A religious sect that we used to see around the town wore the tabour.  Our group always referred to them as “Guinness bottles”. A few of the villages outside Damascus had some old people who still spoke Aramaic in their home.  That was the Language that Jesus spoke and I mean Jesus of Nazareth.  (Jesus is also an Arabic surname).

You could find a shop open on every day of the week.  The Christians (mainly Roman Catholic) had their sabbath on Sunday, as we do.  The Jewish sabbath is on a Saturday.  And the Moslem sabbath is on a Friday.

11      The souk

The Omyad Souk is very close to the mosque.  What I found very noticeable was that trading had a medieval flavour to it.  Each trade had its own area.  There was a gold souk, a silver souk, a leather souk, a cutlery souk, etc.  There was even a sieve souk.  If you wanted a sieve, whether for the garden, or to strain your tea-when pouring it from the pot, you could find them all in one area.  The spice souk would have been a European chef’s heaven.  And you didn’t get little packets of rare spices, you could buy a hundredweight sack if you wanted.  Shelled almonds or walnuts, were an example.  Cinnamon, turmeric, and other spices that are expensive in Europe, were cheap there.  But I expect that a sack of nutmegs would work out a bit expensive, though.

12      Sticky sweets and the dentist

The Arabs have a very sweet tooth.  In the main shopping area of Damascus there were many shops that sold food.  Among these were cake shops.  These sold tarts, flans and all sorts of sticky sweet confectionery.  And not least were Mars Bars.

Whether these chocolate bars were locally made or imported, I don’t know.  But the only difference I could find was in the wrappers.  There was some English wording, but the Arabic was the most prominent.  Not only were Mars Bars available in confectioners, but seemed to be sold at any place that sold food.  Were Mars Bars only sold in Damascus, the company would still have been quite large.

Whilst working in the semi-basement building that housed the equipment, I was given a hard sweet by one of the Arabs.  I suppose I should have sucked it, but I crunched it and broke a piece off my tooth.  I ended up in the recommended dentist’s surgery.  The chap turned out the be the Professor of Dentistry at Damascus University.  I was offered a set of different types of crown that commanded a set of escalating prices.  The most expensive was not outrageous. So I chose that one.  My hopes was that Plessey would pay, turned out to be true.

I had a descale and polish at the same pair of sittings.  I think things are now changing in the UK, but at that time a six-monthly visit was recommended.  The Syrian dentist told me I should return in three months for another descale and polish.  I’d left Syria by then, but I reasoned that maybe in the Arab world with their penchant for sticky sweets, this was probably a good idea.

13      The weather in Damascus

In the winter, it can rain in torrents.  But within an hour, the roads would be dry.  In December and January, the wind from the Lebanese mountains was bitter at night.  But daylight brought hot sun.  A mountain named Bab-el-Sheik in the Lebanese mountains (visible from the city) was of a height that it only lost its snow cap during an unusually hot summer.  There were some lovely little resort towns in the higher ground.  I got the firm’s car to use during the visit at Christmas of Jeanne (my first wife.  God rest her soul} and my youngest daughter Claire.  We went up to Bludan on a run-out and got pelted with snowballs by local youths.  As far as our lot were concerned, Syria was a nice place.  But it was evident that the security services kept a close eye on us. If we strayed off the beaten track, we would often spot a white Rangerover.  This type of vehicle was only ever used by the spooks.

14      Considered retiring in Damascus

I seriously considered retiring in Syria.  My savings would have gone a lot further there.  Medical treatment was fairly good if you could pay.  The weather was much better than in the UK, and in the ten months I was there I didn’t get a tweak of fibrocitis.  I did visit a local hospital for a tetanus jab after my moggy involvement, it was dowdy, but appeared clean and effective.  The doctor I saw spoke good English.  I didn’t make an appointment, but turned up on spec.  Jeanne’s objections were the reason I changed my mind.  I doubt that her heart condition could be treated as well in Syria as at Harefield in Middlesex.

The Syrians admit that they are “third-world”, but there are a lot worse places  in my judgement.  I was once mistaken for a Russian by a taxi driver.  The driver pointed at me and said “Russe” in an enquiring voice.  I replied emphatically “La la, Ingleesie”.  He smiled and looked relieved.  I believe that my age and appearance could well appear that I was a Russian commissar or something.

The Russians had a lot of advisers for the Syrian military, but were detested by a large segment of the population.  It seems that the Ruskies were arrogant.  If a Syrian soldier asked “Why is it done this way”, the reply was often “because I say so”.  Not a way to make friends in such a proud race such as the Arabs.  A few of the very Europeanised Arabs fully understood our view of them.  But they were a rarity.  I heard one of them say, when we discussed the bus and truck smash “You know, donkeys and camels don’t bang into each other on corners”

None of the Russians lived in the town like the rest of the Europeans, they lived in a walled enclosure.  I was told that one of the Russians ventured out of his compound one night, and was discovered with a knife in his back the following morning.

But the Europeans were safer in Damascus that in London or Paris.  We were friends with the local people, and most of the locals liked to be seen with a European.  The Syrians were hard on their criminals.  There was about one hanging a week in a secluded square in Damascus.  I was told that any crime that we would consider to be particularly nasty, they always hanged the perpetrator.  Much lesser crimes such as short-weight from a shop was dealt with quite severely too.  If ever you tendered a largish note to buy, say a melon, the vendor always made certain that you understood you were getting the proper change.

Near the British Embassy there was a general grocer named Abu Shahar, nicknamed by the Embassy people as Abu Shark.  An embassy woman bought a kilo of sugar, and on weighing it when she got back to her apartment fond it to be about three quarters of a kilo.  The embassy reported it to the city authorities.  Abu was fined a hundred Syrian pounds (about ten pounds Sterling) and had to stay shut until the fine was paid. Not long before I left he tried it on with another embassy women.  This time he got fined ten thousand Syrian pounds.  When I left he was still closed.

One very nice aspect of Damascus was that the tap water was fit to drink.  The city got its water from an aquifer below the city.  The water was probably more than ten thousand years old.  The Lebanese and Turkish hills drained into that aquifer.  Outside the town where we worked, the water was very suspect.  The army always brought their own supply from the city every morning.

Damascus was one of the cities in that part of the world that didn’t have a sewage treatment works, although they had all the piping infrastructure.  The EU were considering funding a totally new sewage works, as the rest of the infrastructure was in place.  All sewage was piped out on to the farmland to the south of the city.  Occasionally there were outbreaks of one of the intestinal diseases such as cholera.  What we all did if we bought fresh fruit that was not able to be peeled, we would make up a bowl of Milton solution and immerse the fruit for an hour.  Milton is a sterilising fluid that is tasteless.  It is widely used by Europeans in the Middle East.  It is also used to sterilise baby’s bottles in the UK.

There were several swimming baths around the city.  One was of Olympic proportions, One was a pool strictly for women only.  The one that we all used was supposed to be for Europeans only, but a few Arabs used it.  One could see as much bare flesh as in any European pool.  To the west of the pool was a helicopter airfield.  The choppers always landed (or took off) over the pool.  It seemed certain that the Arab pilots wanted to get as good a view of ‘the talent’ as possible.  And for men who rarely saw anything above a woman’s ankle, it must have been an opportunity not to be missed

The pool had a cafe that was quite good, except that they sold bottled fizzy drinks in glass containers.  I have seen several tumblers and bottles smashed on the tiled floor.  The glass was always swept up promptly, but slivers of glass are very difficult to see.  Syria wasn’t up to Europe or North America in matters of safety.

The pool that we used was emptied on a weekly basis.  The water was piped out onto a local farm.  The new water was extracted from the aquifer and was quite cold for the first day.  But the daytime sun soon warmed the water to a comfortable eighty five to ninety degrees.  But on the subject of water, I learned from a British Hydrologist employed by the Syrian government to look for new sources of water, that the aquifer was rapidly running dry.  He opined that Damascus water was purer than London water.  “It had only been round once” he said.

The EU were funding quite a lot of projects in Syria.  I met quite a few European technicians at the weekly “Pig and Whistle” ’get-together’ at the British Embassy. One chap I met was a Swede who was trying to set up a service depot for Volvo cars.  There were quite a lot of Volvos in Damascus.  I think it may have been their tank-like safety features that was the selling point.  Although in other respects it did not fit the fatalism of the Arabs  He complained bitterly to me that it seemed near impossible to get the concept across to prospective customers that “we know the car has not broken down, but it still needs servicing”.  Car-care, or other forms of maintenance, is not in the Arab culture”

15      Damascus roundabouts

Roundabouts in Damascus were interesting.  Animals, with or without carts, were not traffic and were allowed to go round a roundabout in the wrong direction.  I suggested to one fellow that they should try a Donkey Derby in one direction and a motor race in the other direction.  The joke went as flat as an ironing board.  (I said you should never try a joke on a foreigner).

All the new part of the city was laid out by the French.  You could only get a Highway Code written in French or Arabic.  On a subsequent visit to Paris, I thought “How like Damascus this place is”.  There was one particularly large roundabout that had traffic lights on each approach-road about thirty yards from the entrance to the roundabout proper.  The traffic circle was also controlled by lights.  At the start of a new cycle, a motorist would stop at a red light some distance back from the roundabout proper..  A few seconds later the second car would pass the stationary car and stop in front of the first car.  I didn’t see any sort of road-rage that one might expect with such an action in this country.  This sequence continued until the queue of cars reached the traffic circle proper.

When the lights turned green, the driver in the queue who was able to see the lights, sounded his horn.  This was the signal for everybody to advance onto the roundabout proper.  I never saw it done, but a joker could wreak havoc.

In the city proper, and occasionally in a small village outside the city, one would meet road humps.  And the Syrians don’t do things like traffic-calming, by halves. The humps were always semicircular and about four inches high.  The worst British road-hump allows you to drive across at about 15 mph.  The Damascus ones had to be treated as if you were mounting a four inch kerb.  In Britain they are always made visible by a sign and white paint markings.  Not so in Syria, they were black on black; and in dim lighting they were a real hazard.

Sometimes the Syrians would close a road for maintenance.  You discovered this when you met a row of forty-gallon oil drums across the road.  There were no diversion signs; you had to find your own way round.  On the big roundabout that fed the Airport Road, one day we found a fifty foot square by ten feet deep hole.  There was no indication why the hole was there  It wasn’t too bad in broad daylight.  The rusty protective mesh barrier was quite visible.  But a week later we passed the hole and noticed a bus in it.  Presumably the bus-driver had failed to see the rusty brown mesh barrier after dark.  But the day after that, the bus had been removed and the mesh barrier was back in place.  (Perhaps waiting for the next bus !)

16      The Marine Club

As in most cities with an American Embassy, the US Marines act as a guard..  Damascus was no exception.  The Marines had a Social Club.  We were allowed to used it.  In 1980 video cassettes were in their infancy.  The diplomatic bag was used to ship cassettes from the USA to Syria.  I watched a few but soon got fed-up with the TV recordings.  The commercials were a real put-off.  A film-play could be showing  a tense drama in a forest.  The scene would show someone stalking the villain and as he moved round a corner you would see a couple in bed discussing the merits of a new sort of toilet paper.  Our commercials are annoying, but at least you know it is not part of the high-suspense film-play.  And the commercials took up about a third of the video.  How the Yanks can suffer this, I don’t know.  On my visits to the USA, I only ever watched Public Service channels.  I can see why they call a TV, ‘the boob-toob’ (at least, that was the name when I visited Fort Wayne in Indiana).

In the Marine Club I found that the lads were most interesting to talk to.  All the beer was imported.  My visit was at the time of the Iranian Embassy siege.  One of the lads had served under the Marine Major in charge of that exercise.  His opinion of that major was anything but complementary.  He told me that the major was one of these gung-ho characters who believed that if it was American, it couldn’t fail.  If you remember, Jimmy Carter was advised that if a helicopter task-force was used from the desert, it must be before a certain date because of the sandstorms.  The assault took place a while after the crucial date.  The fiasco occurred in which two helicopters crashed into each other and the embassy staff did not get released.

The rest of the fiasco was that the shredded papers left by the embassy staff as they were captured by the Iranian students, were pieced together so that they could be read. One has to acknowledge perseverance by the students in resurrecting shredded papers. But the West has learned from this experience, papers are now double-shredded.

I was friendly with a French ex-paratrooper-commando who lived near my apartment.  He spoke good English, and exercised it well in his vitriol about the competence of the American military.  He explained to me the way he would have planned the exercise; quite a different approach.  He kept a good store of superb brandy.  It could only be obtained using hard currency in the duty-free shop and showing a European ID.  He was quite a character.  He showed me his pair of pistols that he kept, just in case!

17      There are Generals, and then, there are generals

I learnt a little about the career structure of the Syrian army.  If an officer made the army his career, he would eventually rise to be a general.  But there were generals and then, there were Generals.  Salah Ashram was our general and had real power.  He accompanied the President on overseas visits, and spoke several languages including Russian.

The lesser generals were simply on the payroll as a sinecure .  There was one sort of social get-together on one occasion at the army camp where I worked and several of the so-called generals attended.  It was obvious even to me as an outsider, that some of the erks in a general’s uniform were rural hicks.  Their manners when eating a piece of melon were like those of a caveman.  Salah Ashram was nobility compared with them.

18      I bought a pair of specs

I bought a pair of bi-focal glasses from an optician in the town.  The chap, who spoke good English, told me a little about his trading.  He offered me a good discount if I could pay him in Sterling, which I did.  The black market gave a much better exchange rate than the official one  He visited East Germany once a month and placed his prescriptions with (I think it was) Zeis and waited for them to be made up, and then returned to Syria with the specs.  I can’t remember what I paid, but it was less than I would have paid in the UK.  He boasted to me that he could speak Russian, German, Greek, and of course, Arabic and English.  The Arabs are excellent linguists.

Another Arab once told me that they were a lucky people as Arabic has all the sounds of the other languages.  I don’t know whether he had ever met Welsh!   But there are some sounds in Arabic that are totally beyond me.  They even have a letter in their alphabet for a glottal stop.

19      Imported items

Earlier I mentioned Mars Bars, these were not the only imported items.  Many things were bought in from Europe and the USA, but they generally cost double or more than we would have paid.  But as regards foodstuffs, if one purchased locally grown or locally manufactured goods, they were cheaper than in the UK.  I was told that most imports attracted a hundred percent duty.  I once bought a packet of cornflakes and was shocked at what I had to pay.

Many items were bogus copies of European goods.  I once bought a packet of Fig Rolls biscuits that looked to be in the genuine wrapper of the English manufacturer.  They turned out to be very inferior dry chocolate biscuits.  My best guess is that the wrapper-manufacturer must have sold a job lot of printed plastic sheeting on the side and it ended up in the Middle East.  The wrapper looked so genuine.

There were other bogus copies of many things were on sale in Damascus, particularly audio tapes.  It was strange to have a good tape of a Beethoven Symphony with the last two minutes of the tape filled with an appalling pop group row.  I thought it might be that the Arabic buyers would complain if there was two minutes of blank on the tape.  I liked Syrian beer better than the imported stuff, and it was a lot cheaper.  There were two breweries in Damascus.  Most Europeans imagine that a Muslim country must automatically be dry.  But in Damascus it was possible to get blind drunk every night, if that was your thing.

20      Midnight Mass

The visit of Jeanne and Claire was over Christmas.  We went to Midnight Mass in the large Catholic Church in Damascus.  On a normal Sunday different masses were held at different times for different nationalities, but there can only be one midnight mass a year.  The mass was an international one.  The priest had a beautifully sonorous voice. I recognised French, Italian, German.  Mass recited in Arabic had a magic feel to me. I knew enough of the language to recognise some of the wording.  The Creed was particularly moving.

21      More thoughts about the place

One of the telecom fellows used to go up-country most weekends and had a small boat he sailed.  Our group used to discuss him and the probability that he would be arrested for being in a place he was not supposed to be in.  That he was working for the MI5 was mooted  But he ingratiated himself with the Syrian military by mending and improving the function a Russian radar that had gone pop.  He told me that he redesigned some of the front-end circuitry that he reckoned was crap. Not long after I returned home, I heard his name on the news. The report was that he had been arrested by the Libyan security by being in a closed zone in that country.  Plessey, of course denied any involvement, but they may never have known of his other activities

I fell in love with the Muslim world.  But they can be infuriating when it comes to business matters.  Their concept of business is totally at odds with European thought.  And there are strange ways you can insult them too.  There are publications available in Britain for business travellers, pointing out the pitfalls when travelling in the Arab world.

22      Paracetamol in Syria

The building my flat was in, was close to a junction of several roads.  As a result of its position, the roadway was very wide outside my front gate.  On the other side of this wide portion of roadway was a pharmacist.  Pharmacists in Damascus only sold pharmacy items.  They did not even sell soap.

I went into the pharmacy one day too see if I could buy some paracetamol tablets. The man behind the counter spoke excellent English, and he told me that paracetamol was illegal in Syria but he could sell me some aspirin, which he did.

I was a bit embarrassed to ask him why the drug was illegal in Syria as I had a suspicion that I already knew the reason.  An overdose of paracetamol is much more dangerous than an overdose of aspirin.

I think that a normal dose of paracetamol is preferred because many people get tummy upsets with aspirin.  However, a serious overdose of paracetamol is a death sentence within about seven days as it will cause liver failure with the only treatment being a liver transplant.

Knowing a little of the Arab mentality, I reasoned that many Arabs would be likely to take an overdose..  Their logic would be that if two tablets helped a headache, twenty tablets would ten times better.  It sounds to be an  insulting thing to suggest, but their logic (as perceived by the European mind) in other matters is just as ridiculous as my suggestion.

I was talking to a European on one occasion and we were discussing the Arab mentality vis-à-vis the background of Islam.  This chap told me that to a devout Muslim, a discussion of the weather was taboo.  That subject was the province of Allah.  You can see how easily it is to say the wrong thing.  But most of the soldiers and officers we mixed with were very modern in their thoughts.  I had a theological argument with one of the offices who was a proclaimed atheist.  I asserted to him, as I have to other people, that atheism is more illogical than being a believer.  One cannot prove a negative.  You might reasonably argue that the Almighty is not as Christians say He is; but to claim that “there is no god” is unsupportable.

23      I B M

Some bright spark among the Europeans invented a maxim that was always quoted when one became exasperated by an Arab’s action or statement.  IBM was not used to denote the International Business Machines company, but as the initial letters of three words that seem to sum up the Arabic culture; at least, as seen from a cynical European standpoint.

I          Inshala translates into ‘God Willing.  You never talk about a future action without adding ‘inshalla’.

B         Buckra translates into ‘tomorrow’.  Some cynics say that it doesn’t have the urgency of the Spanish word ‘mañana’.

M      Maffee (in Syrian Arabic) (In Egyptian Arabic it is’ ma-feesh’)

          The word means ‘never mind’ or ‘it doesn’t matter’

           (Egyptian Arabic and Syrian Arabic have a lot of  words and phrases that differ from each other.  The only two that I know is the one above, and the word ‘dulab’.  In Egyptian ‘dulab’ is ‘a cupboard’, but in Syrian it is ‘a motor tyre’.  Arabic doesn’t have the indefinite article, it is inferred.  The definite article is ‘Il’ El’ or ‘Al’ depending what sound follows it.

I’ve heard it suggested that Egyptian and Syrian Arabic are a bit like American and British English.  As with the two versions of English, American English is much better known world-wide.  If you get a Linguaphone Arabic course, it will be in Egyptian Arabic (at least that was true when I bought one in the late 1970s

You remember when Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt not long after the seven-day war.  Most of the rest of the Arab world became at arms length with Egypt.  It was during that time that a Brit hailed a taxi on the outskirts of Damascus to be taken to his hotel in the city.  He and the taxi driver struck up a conversation in limited English and Arabic.  The Brit used a word that was truly Egyptian and the driver took offence and ordered him out of the taxi in the middle of nowhere with a few choice words accusing him of being a stooge of Egypt.

But when I was in Syria, the local television station had a regular evening TV-soap.  I used to watch it occasionally without understanding most of the dialogue. But it soon became apparent that the programme was from Cairo.  I forget what the Egyptian name for ‘Cairo’ is, but I knew it then.  On the subject of place-names, The Damascans call their city ‘E-sham’. The French word is ‘Damas’.  I believe that the word ‘Damascus’ is of European origin from the name of a local fabric that the city is renowned for: ‘Damask’.  The souk had many stall-holders who sold damask table cloths to tourists.

I had proof of the local name when I once gave a lift to a chap from near the army camp into the city proper.  The Arabs don’t thumb a lift, they stand close to the roadside and look pleadingly at the driver of passing cars.  It was broad daylight and a wide open road, so I stopped the car and opened the passenger door.  I never had any fear of attack the whole while I was in Syria  The fellow said ‘E-sham” in a querying voice.  I beckoned to him to get inside.

He did so and I went off towards the city.  When we had reached a point on my way back to the apartment, he said something and I stopped the car.  He got out and with only the briefest of thanks disappeared.

I knew by this time that the way we would say ‘thank-you’ is considered to be ‘over-the-top’ by the Arabs.  In a shop if you give your money and get the goods, a ‘thank-you’ is unnecessary.  If you do say ‘thank you’ you will get a very emphasised ‘afwan’.  This word has several meanings, from ‘you are welcome’ as a response to Shukran (thank you), to an apology for something you have done wrong.  It seems that there is no need to say ‘thank you’ unless you get a special favour.

In the “English business man visiting Arabia” you are told not to be insulted if you present an Arab with a gift, he will just take it off you without a word and put it on a table of shelf.  In Europe that would be an insult.  In Arabia that is normal. But never buy anything for the wife.  This may well not be true for a modern Arab who knows the western culture.

I learnt a lot in that ten months, but there is still had a lot to learn.

24      A house-servant and Damascus plumbing

One of the telecom’s team was moved apartments into a better one.  This new block also housed a brother of the President.  So, as with all building that had any status (like embassies and VIP’s apartments) there was a police post outside the front taking up almost the whole width of the pavement.  Any visitor had to show their ID, which in my case was my passport.  When sufficient visits had been made that the coppers on duty remembered your face he would wave you though unmolested.  I only visited the place twice.  The first time I followed the Plessey man and he walked through a corridor past an Arab charwoman in sloppy shorts and blouse.

As I passed her, I looked at her and wished her ‘good morning’ in Arabic without thinking of the culture difference.  Her return expression was half of shock and half of unexpected pleasure. I realised that I had broken a cultural law in that I should have totally ignored her.  I may well have made her day!  A 55-year-old European greeting her politely would have been as surprising as if the Queen had greeted a gang of street cleaners with “Good morning gentlemen”.

Damascus plumbing was not of the highest standard.  The Plessey man and his wife moved into the new apartment just as some major refurbishment was being completed. It didn’t take the woman long to notice a vile stench in the bathroom.  They called the agent, who called the plumber, who could find nothing wrong.  It was the Plessey man who identified the cause.  The bath overflow went straight into the sewer without a water-trap.  Few sewers are sweet, and Damascan sewers are a lot less sweet than British ones.  A significant piece of re-plumbing was necessary to correct the fault. I think “I B M.” was used more than once.

25      Washing the streets

In the better parts of the town, such as where we were, the streets were washed once a week in the summer.  Within the Arab culture, once inside their front door their sense of hygiene is as advanced as in any European home.  But outside in the street and public places, the place can be a smelly tip littered with all sorts of rubbish.  But I expect the municipal authorities were much more fussy with the outsides of many European embassies.  So bits of food and other detritus was swept up two or three times a week.  And in hot weather the street washer went round our area of the city.

Our suburb was in the north of the city where the ground rose to form a high escarpment as it turned into part of the Syrian Desert.  Mahazherine was having a lot of building work done, and at times a quite strong wind came from the north.  This carried the building dust and desert dust across our part of the city.  The street washing machines were very like the ones used in London before, and shortly after, the war.  But hose-pipes were also used and if you happened to leave a parked car window open, that car got washed, inside and out.

Because of the sloping streets, a small torrent sometimes came down the road towards the big junction just below the British Embassy.  The water used was taken from a small river that was far too polluted for its water to be put into the main supply.  As I said elsewhere, the mains water was perfectly fit to drink.  By this date (April 2003) they must have had to find a new source of water other than the subterranean aquifer that was rapidly expiring when I was there in the 1980s.  Is the mains water still fit to drink?  I wonder !

26      Chickens on the roof

I don’t suppose that there are many blocks of flats in Mayfair that keep chickens on the roof.  But Mahazherine, as the Mayfair of Damascus, was much more enterprising. I was woken several times about four AM by a cock crowing.  Sally Kabani told me which actual building had the chickens.  But it was no more disturbing than the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer at a similar hour

27      The flat I was in, and floor drains

The flat had a large kitchen with all the walls lined with marble work surfaces. The ceilings were lofty with large airy windows.  The place was built for the Syrian climate.  It was also built for cleaning.  All the floors were of terrazzo tile capable of being washed.  Instead of using a vacuum cleaner to pick up the inevitable dust (that I mentioned above), one would pick up the few mats that were on the floor and empty a bucket of water on to the floor and sweep the contents into the drain that was in the corner of every room.  Initially I used to leave the windows open until Madam came in one day, and with some sign language she pointed out that a pigeon could fly in.  I don’t suppose Damascus pigeons are any worse that London ones, but I once saw a pigeon fly into a wall in a house and its response was a very large dollop of muck as the bird had an immense fright (the animal kingdom has a lot in common)

28      Bottle-gas-cooking

There was no town-gas pipe system in Damascus.  I would doubt that any other Syrian city has a gas system either.  So if one wants to cook by gas, butane cylinders are necessary.  Its similar to the system used in caravans in this country. About a quarter of a mile from my apartment was a depot that exchanged empty cylinders for full ones. I can’t remember the price, but it was fairly low. However, if one wants to purchase a new full cylinder, the price was a great deal dearer than an exchange one.

29      Ramadan

In Christianity we have a time of fasting.  We know it as Lent.  There is a similar principle in Islam, they know it as Ramadan.  As might be expected, the requirements for the Faithful are not the same in both religions.

In Catholicism until recently, Friday was the weekly day for fasting.  But as we Europeans are not as severe as the Muslim world, Rome allowed followers to eat fish instead of meat rather than full blooded fasting.  To me, as I like fish, it would have been no penance at all.  But even this spartanism was relaxed further for hard-working men, and nursing mothers.

In Islam it is forbidden to allow food or water to pass the lips during Ramadan between sunrise and sunset.  Their exceptions are similar to the Christians.  Nursing mothers, the sick, young children, and travellers.  I was wicked enough to ask a Muslim soldier I knew, what would be the effect if a Muslim was at the North Pole during Ramadan, as dusk and dawn were six months apart.  With a grin he informed me that Muslims are not normally found at the poles, so one would obviously be a traveller, and hence exempt.

Ramadan was in the summer when I was in Syria.  So life was hard for the Faithful who practised the religion.  Not a sip of liquid between dusk and dawn that were about sixteen hours apart, and a hot country  to boot !

30      The Muslim Year

The Muslim year is based on the moon, so it has a different length to the secular year.  Their years started from the birth of Muhammad.  I was in Syria in 1400, (or 1980 by our reckoning).  There are publications available if a reader is interested  in studying Islamic astronomy..  They were well ahead of Europe in mediaeval times.  They were ahead of us too, in mathematics and other sciences.

31      Jewish souk, brass plates, and Hebrew

There was a souk where the Jewish traders and craftsman carried out their business.  Most Europeans think of the Jews and the Arabs as different people. But that is a mistaken view.  The modern definition of an Arab is a person who speaks Arabic as his first language.  In Damascus, Arabs consisted of Muslims, Jews, Christian, and I expect a few other religions.  I have already mentioned an atheist Arab.  They all speak Arabic as their first language, so they are all Arabs.

In this Jewish area of the souk there were a few traders who made brass plates. They were a sight for any student of mediaeval craftsmanship.  They started off with a circular piece of brass plate, and they cut scallops off the rim to produce a decorative sheet of brass.  They then hammered the sheet to produce a contoured surface decoration.  This was followed by mechanical etching of the surface to form a picture. The etching was then filled wit a black goo that hardened  A customer could give the tradesman a picture to copy, or ask for a scene of his choice that they translated into an etched picture.  I bought several plates.  I bought one of Moses crossing the Red Sea.

I discovered another interesting facet of Judaism; in Christianity we depict a holy person as having a halo of light around their head.  In Judaism, they depict a holy person as having rays of light emanating from their head.  In very crude English, this old Jewboy explained this fact.  I don’t know how old he was, but he looked ancient.  But he was a superb tradesman.  I asked him to produce a plate with a mosque in the background with the words “God is Great” in English, Hebrew and Arabic.  He refused by explaining, again in crude English, that he could land up in clink if he reproduced anything with Hebrew wording. I believe that I am correct in saying that Hebrew was only permitted within the synagogue, or if used by the security services.  To my view of the matter, this shows the neurotic state of hatred towards Israel by surrounding Muslim nations.

32      Mosaic-decorated telephone

Not far from the brass-plate shop was another place that had in its window a variety of Mosaic-decorated items.  To me, the most weird item was an old-fashioned desk-telephone totally covered in black and white mosaic.  I have no idea what the mosaic material was made from, but it had the appearance of thin pieces of white tile.

It seemed as if the telephone was operative as the dial protruded through the mosaic and it was still possible to put the handset onto the cradle.  Even the handset was decorated in the same style.  Beautifully horrible; it must have taken hours of labour to produce this ghastly work-of-art.

33      Goats clean up household rubbish

As soon as I moved into the flat in Mahazherine, an army minibus used to call at about 7.30 AM six days a week to collect me.  The seated van would then go all over the city picking up other people, mainly soldiers, and take us all to the camp where the equipment was being installed.  Chris Stone generally picked up one or two of our group and made his own way to the camp in the company’s car.

The routes that we took were many and various.  We never seemed to go the same way on two mornings running.  I reckoned at the end of my tour, I knew Damascus better than I did Addlestone.  I particularly remember two journeys.  One of the trips took us past a school in an outer suburb.  From the outside the school could have been anywhere in Britain, except for the playground.

I have never seen such a mess.  The playground was about the same size as many British medium-sized schools.  But the quantity of litter was enormous.  Paper and plastic bags dominated the scene.  Had it been collected, and put into one lorry it would have been a seven cubic yard one.  This is the size of the average council lorry used over here for road repairs.  Many other sites were full of litter, but I can’t remember one that had such a concentration of paper and plastic bags.

The other village that I remember was one that we drove through en-route to the army camp; it had a pile of rubbish in a central area.  It was fairly obvious that the pile consisted of the detritus of daily living.  The standard of living of the average Syrian was, and still is, a long way below Europe or North America, but there were enough indicators to show that the sort of garbage was from everyday household living.  The odd broken kitchen utensil, a worn-out piece of clothing, bottles and cans, banana skins and apple cores.  I would guess that when I saw the sight, the goats had about half-done their job.

It was explained to me that the municipal authority would come at some time later and remove the rubbish, but to keep the place as fly-free as possible the local goats were turned loose on to the pile.  I am no expert on goats, but I know that there is not a lot that can be chomped that goats will ignore.  Only camels are more capable of eating the uneatable.  Camels will tackle a cactus that a human would approach with care even when wearing leather gloves.

34      Television in Damascus

There was only one TV station in Damascus when I was there.  The only things I watched were things like Russian ballet and orchestral music.  The latter was very rare as western music did not have a great following in the Arab world.  I occasionally watched bits of an Egyptian soap opera.

But one thing I used to like was listening to the news.  My Arabic was far too limited to understand anything other than a few odd words, but if you listen to an educated Arab talking in his own language, there is a beauty in his enunciation.  I was told that Arabic is very phonetic, and I then knew most of the sounds of the language and could almost imagine the spelling of the words. The letter that most pleases me is the heavy ‘H’ in names like ‘Bahrain’ and ‘Ahmed’.  When the heavy ‘H’ is transliterated into English, it normally has a dot over the letter.  The normal, sort of, European ‘H’ is transliterated unchanged.

It annoys me immensely that the BBC make no attempt at sounding the heavy ‘H’, except in the rarest of cases.  But it is not difficult.  Some of the Arab letters are very difficult for a European to pronounce.  When I hear a BBC announcer refer to ‘Ar-med’. It makes me squirm.

Damascan TV was generally turgid, but it was possible to pick up the TV station in Amman Jordan.  If one pointed the TV aerial to the north, the rising hill acted as a good reflector for the Jordan signals from the south.  Jordan is modern and westernised..  In fact the day I had a trip to Jordan I noticed as we crossed the border that dangerous corners on roads had Armco barriers as we do in this country.  All the military wear uniforms identical to RAF ones.  You feel that you are at home.

35      I saw a car hit a woman

During the first week while we were  waiting for some equipment to be delivered, our site manager took us for a run round the district in the car he bought for Plessey.  It was a 4/5 seater Golf hatchback.  We went out into the country and saw some sights.

In Britain one is always told to walk facing the oncoming traffic.  The reasons are pretty obvious.  I expect the USA and mainland Europeans are advised similarly. I don’t know what the Arabs are advised, probably no advice is given.  But it is almost always that pedestrians walk with the oncoming traffic at their rear.

On this trip out into the country we saw a crocodile of pedestrians walking, with busy traffic coming up from behind.  One woman, carrying the usual load on her head, was clipped by a small van and ended up laying on the road.  Nothing stopped.  Chris Stone said in a firm voice “We do NOT get involved”. We drove off.  So many things were happening around that time that I didn’t follow up that incident to ask him to elaborate on his warning.

36      I got the flu

One morning I woke up at the usual six o’clock and felt terrible.  My usual pick-up arrived at the regular time and sounded long blasts on his car horn.  Eventually the officer in charge came up to my flat and rang the bell.  I answered the door in my pyjamas and explained I was ill.  He left and Chris came round in the afternoon to see me.  I was somewhat recovered and explained that it seemed to be a very short bout of flu.  I was quite recovered by the third day.

37      Paying your telephone bill

Things like electricity and water seemed to be part of the rent of the apartment. Letting my flat was a private arrangement and no agent was involved.  But the other chaps rented their apartments via an official agent who registered the letting with the authorities.  If you wanted the telephone installed, you had to make your own arrangements with the telephone authority.  Everything of this nature seemed to be state-owned.  As Syria was so much part of the Soviet bloc, I suppose that this sort of activity was Soviet-led.

As with the Soviet system one had to get an exit visa to leave the country.  When one applied for the visa the authorities checked on all the utilities to see that there were no outstanding bills.  This was the reason that my predecessor was able to leave the country with unpaid rent; his letting, like mine, was not registered.

One of our chaps had the telephone laid on.  It was possible to ring the UK, but as there was no direct international dialling at that time, the wait was enormous.  One day he found that his telephone was dead.  Although the operators spoke fair English it was easier to go to the telephone office than to report the fault via another telephone.  When he explained that the phone was dead he got a quick explanation.  He had not paid his bill.

“But I haven’t received a bill”.

“I know, we don’t send out bills.”

“So how am I supposed to know what the bill is and when to pay it?”

“Oh, haven’t you been told?

“Told what?”

“When it’s time to pay telephone bills, an announcement is made on the evening television and you come to the office and we tell you what the bill is.”

I don’t know what charge, if any, there was to reconnect his line.

The Arabs think differently to us Europeans, and I include North Americans as “us”.

38      Tome Jones’ Jokes

One of our group was named Tom Jones.  He was nothing like the singer in appearance.  He wasn’t a very amiable character, but he was definitely a very good engineer and as bright as a polished sixpence.  Some of his quips were hilarious.

As I’ve said earlier, the various markets were divided into specialist areas.  On one occasion we drove past an area that seemed to be part of the main souk.  Whether it contained scrap metal, or what, we had no idea.  “Look” piped up Tom, “A rubbish souk”

Another of his observations was when we passed a huge pile of rubbish and a few battered bits of motor vehicles in the middle of the road at the end of a central median (or central reservation).  The pile was almost like an immense cairn  “Look” he declared, “The tomb of the Unknown Motorist”

39        Mail in and out

There didn’t seem to be general mail deliveries to houses or flats.  If you were likely to get mail you had to register and get a mailbox.  I think all business, including hotels, had a mailbox.  But there were a few public post-boxes in the city.  One was on a large cross-roads near the British Embassy.  I once popped a letter home into this postbox.  The companion I was with said “That’s the last you’ll see of that”  But he was wrong as I know it arrived in the UK because my wife replied specifically to the letter.  If I remember correctly, our mail came via an army mailbox.

40        Arabs moving and storing equipment

This story is not about Syria, but more about Saudi Arabia.  In our total group were fellows who knew the Arab world well.  I was told a story about a diesel generating set that was shipped to Saudi and then transported by low-loader to some place inland. When the generator arrived at its final destination it was found that no crane was available to get it off the lorry.  As I have already indicated, the Arabs are very inventive.  There was a good solid tree where they wanted to unload it.  Simple  --  tie a rope to the tree and secure it to the diesel set and drive the lorry away.  It worked.  But low-loaders are not that low.  Generally not less that two foot six from the floor.  A diesel set falling two foot six on to concrete does not, generally, work very well afterwards.  “Maffee” (Never mind).

41        The excision of the wart on my thumb

We Plessey-ites had our own General Practitioner doctor.  I have had a wart on the ball of my right thumb since I was in my twenties.  The wart occasionally grows a bit and I pare it with a sharp knife.  In Syria it suddenly decided to grow quite rapidly.  I went to the quack.

He told me that he would need to refer me to a dermatologist.  He wrote the address in Arabic on a piece of paper and told me to show the paper to the taxi driver.  It was only a few minutes down the road.  The taxi took me there.  The doctor had phoned ahead and the dermatologist welcomed me as I stepped into the outer office.

He took me into the inner sanctum and apologised for his limited English.  I found his command of the language quite adequate.  He explained that his Russian was much better than his English — he said he had trained in Russia.

He then went on to demonstrate the archaic equipment that must have been in use in Russia at that time.  He injected a local anaesthetic into my thumb and it hurt like hell. When my thumb was numb, he wrapped a piece of sheet lead around my arm.  The sheet lead had the earth wire attached and made the return path for the spark-etch current.  The actual current involved in such actions is only micro-amps and gives no sensation of being shocked.  But had my thumb not been anaesthetised, the spark-burning would have been unbearable.  He then proceeded to spark-etch the wart away. The stink of burning flesh was revolting. He put a dry dressing on my thumb and told me to keep it dry for a week.  I paid his bill and got a receipt (that Plessey paid me for later).  I can’t remember what it cost, but by European standards it was cheap.

42        Cashing a cheque

I don’t know whether things have changes since I was out there, but the only bank in Syria then was the National Bank of Syria.  I never set foot into any of the branches, but Chris had opened an account at the beginning of our stay so that Plessey could transfer money for Chris to pay our expenses.  It was on a roughly weekly basis that Chris cashed a cheque.  He explained on one occasion the rigmarole that cashing a cheque entailed.  You would take the made-out cheque to the first cashier.  He would consult various records to ensure that there was enough money in the account to meet the cheque.  The piece of paper was passed along to the next cashier who consulted more records.  I can’t remember whether one had to show one’s passport, or not.  Knowing the Arabs, I expect he did.  You then moved to another counter and after more record checking you were given the cash.

As each desk had a queue, it was an afternoon’s work to cash a cheque.  Remember, Syria was a Socialist Republic and had a duty towards full employment, so efficiencies like we aim for in the West would conflict with government policy.

I believe that the only credit card that existed in Syria at that time was American Express, and that was only accepted by a very small number of Europeanised shops.

43      Life in Saudi

I’ve never been to Saudi, but from the various stories I have heard from Brits and Yanks I met in Syria, it is a country to be avoided.  A few of the stories I heard in Syria and later.

Women cannot get a driving license in Saudi.

If you’re wealthy in Saudi, the law doesn’t apply to you.  A few words to a policeman is sufficient to cause him to lose interest in any error the Arab may have committed.  (How this is done, I have no idea).

If you are wealthy and your car breaks down, you just get out, hail a taxi and buy another one.  Don’t bother with the old car, just leave it to rot.  If there is anything valuable in it, you can go back at any time as nothing will be stolen.

A European parked his car overnight outside his apartment close to a wall.  He came out in the morning and was promptly arrested for murder.  What happened was that a young child fell out of a third-floor window and killed itself by falling onto the European’s car.  The logic was that the child may well have survived had the car not been there.  As a foreigner you are very much a second-class citizen

If you are in a taxi and the driver has a prang, leave a bit more that what you think the fare would have been, on the back seat and disappear as fast as you can.  In Sharia Law the master is responsible for his servant’s actions, and the driver is your servant until the contract is discharged.

 The Syrian population didn’t like the Saudis one little bit.  Damascus in the summer is a lot cooler than, say, Riyadh.  No Saudi with money ever took a driving test, and most were terrible drivers.  The Syrian government was in hock to the Saudis as so much money came from Saudi to fund the Syrian military.  (I expect my wages were originally Saudi money.)  So a Saudi citizen with money could get away with murder (probably literally).

 A British pilot who flew for Egypt Air decided to have a look at Saudi.  He hired a car at the airport and took his Egyptian Air hostess girlfriend for a ride to see the sights in Saudi.  But he hadn’t allowed for the religious police.  It is this body that enforces religious law in public places.

 These are the coppers who lash any shopkeeper who fails to close his shop when the muezzin calls them to attend prayers.  These people have other duties too; to see that no infringement of Sharia Law takes place anywhere they patrol.  One of the laws is that no woman may be out and about with any man other than her husband or close male relative.  (How close is ‘close’, I don’t know).

 The police stopped the car and demanded that passports be shown.  The pilot was OK as he was a Christian.  The woman’s passport showed that she was a Muslim. Straight out of the car and into the paddy wagon.  It took the Egyptian Embassy several days to dig her out of clink for her to be deported.

Talking about being a Christian, at one time (and perhaps still is), if a Briton wanted a passport to work in Saudi, he had to present a baptism certificate along with his application form.  Muslims, Jews and Christians are all “people of the Book”.

I’m told that the Koran does not forbid wine.  It is only a custom that is enforced by Saudi Law.  And if you are caught breaking that law, you may well get twenty lashes  And in classical times, there was no other alcoholic beverage other than wine.  The distillation of wine to produce spirits was not known then.

To be a truly Arabic word, it has to have come out of the Koran.  And when the Good Book was written, tables, chairs and a lot of other things didn’t exist. The Arabic words for these sort of things can be traced back to the European imports. Hence ‘dulab’ for cupboard in Egyptian Arabic.

I have to end this little reminiscence with my thanks to Providence for allowing me to see such an enchanting country and its people (Syria I mean, not Saudi).  One of the great charms was that the European would walk back home from a party at two in the morning down the darkest alleys without the slightest fear of being molested.  There are not many cities in the world where one can do that.  And remember, one of the specialities of a good embassy is to know the country and what can and cannot be done.  These people who ventured abroad at these unearthly hours, were as likely as not be staff of a European or North American Embassy.

44      Jesus and his boots

One of the fellows that we worked with explained to me one day that his family name was “your god, his baby”.  I worked it out that he meant that his surname was “Jesus”. As with many names in Arabic, their pronunciation didn’t accord with the way we pronounced the word.  The most common example is “Ebraheim” which we know as “Abraham”.  The Arabs call “Jesus”, something like “Issau”.

Jesus was a big gangly man of a full six feet tall and of very pleasant personality.  He always wore army boots, but never wore socks.  Like everybody else on camp he lived somewhere in Damascus.  There didn’t seem to be a barracks.

One of the young officers invited us to his home to meet his wife.  He lived in a small village outside of the city.  As it was high summer there were a lot of flies and he was very embarrassed by them when he presented us with a meal and tea.  By the way, the Arabs never put milk in their tea.  Plenty of sugar, but never ever with milk.

45      The Quality of driving

The quality of driving was not as bad as one might expect.  I never encountered a Saudi driver though.  The taxis were mainly old American ones of typical 1950-American proportions.  There tended to be sharp practice on fares, but I discovered that a taxi station near the embassy that employed honest operators.  I always used this depot when I wanted to go to the swimming baths.  The driver would drop me outside the baths and we arranged a time for the return journey.

Some of the taxis had huge cracks across their windscreen.  Even the cardiologist in the flat below drove a car with a cracked windscreen

46      Please wait (and other signals)

There was one hand sign that I have seen nowhere other than in Damascus.  But I would imagine that it is not limited just to that city, but as I have not travelled in the rest of the Arab world, I am unable to say.

Raise your right hand level with your shoulder and form all your fingers and thumb into a pyramid.  Twist your wrist so that the tips of the fingers are at the top.  Now oscillate your hand up and down a little.  This sign means “wait”.  If you go into a shop and the shopkeeper doesn’t speak English, he will use the gesture to ask you to wait until he can get someone to talk to you.  This ‘someone’ may be a son, or another nearby shopkeeper.  The up-and-down gesture will be slow and gentle.  But if you have a dispute with another car driver, the signal may well be furious and accompanied by a glare and a lot of incomprehensible shouting.

I know that the middle finger of the right hand thrusting upwards into the air is about as rude as you can get in southern Europe.  Whether this sign has any meaning in the Arab world, I know not.  As I have said above, the Arabs seem not to thumb a lift like we do in Europe..

47        My respects to the Arab world

Having visited Syria and knowing it to be close to Iraq in geography and culture, I feel that I have a lot of sympathy with the ordinary Iraqi people.  The Arabs have a long history of civilisation, but they have yet to arrange their societies so that tyrants cannot take control of a country.  But we mustn’t crow too loudly as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin are too recent in our history, and we could have gone the same way had Moseley had his way.

The breakdown of law and order after the freeing of Baghdad concerns everyone.  I have thought deeply as to whether we in the west would behave in the same way in similar circumstances.  I have concluded that the Iraqi problem may well be that a much larger part of their society is younger than our European societies.  And that youth is not renowned for looking beyond its nose in matters of long-term self-welfare. This may be a consequence of the Islamic objections to birth control.  I am going to stick my neck above the parapet on this subject and declare that it seems to me as if Islam and the Roman church are trying to “outbreed the other lot”.

Many Brits are not aware how far ahead of Europe, Arabia was in the Middle Ages.  In astronomy, mathematics, and other areas of academia, the Arabs were way ahead of Europe.  Just consider what it must have been like doing multiplication using Roman numerals.  And whether or not it would ever have been possible to conjure up concepts like powers of numbers?  The mind boggles.  It wasn’t until Europe adopted the Arabic numbering system, that we began to advance in mathematics.  But why the Arabs decided to adopt the numerals of an Indian language is outside of my scholarship.                                                           

48      Sunbathing

This paragraph is an addition dated November 2003.  I have just finished reading an article in New Scientist Edition  2407 dated 9 August 2003.  The report reminded me of the sunbathing I did whilst I was in Syria.  Somewhere above I seem to remember telling of the time we spent working during the summer.  We were picked up early in the morning by the army bus, and returned home shortly after midday.  Down the road a short way past the British Embassy was a taxi station.  I imagine sharp practices of taxi drivers was not condoned by the more-established companies, because I never found anything untoward from any taxi-driver from this location.  If I walked down to the office, there was often a couple of taxis waiting outside.  I used to go inside the building and see the clerk and he would jabber away to one of the drivers and I would be on my way to the swimming pool on the outskirts of the city.  Twenty or thirty Syrian Pounds (divide by ten for Sterling) and I was dropped outside the pool site.  I would tell the driver when I wanted collecting, and he’d be off.

I’ve said that Syrian sun was hot, but the overall weather was seldom humid.  I set my self a strict routine and initially was only in the sun for five minutes.  I lengthened that time little by little until at the end I could stay out in the midday sun for an hour  In fact, I don’t remember ever getting burned, or even sore.  A short while before I finally came home, I had a magnificent tan without ever overdoing it.

The New Scientist article I referred to above told me little new, I know that UV radiation in moderation generates vitamin D for the body and that that vitamin helps protect against cancer.  An overdose of UV radiation will burn and may provoke skin cancer in later life.  One of the many examples of “a little of what you fancy does you good”.  On most holidays, of course, one does not have sufficient time to gent