There's so much I'd like to tell you about Aleppo in August; though I hardly saw anything of this Syrian city, one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban settlements on our planet (e.g unlike struck-down-by-the-Lord-Babylon or Mesopotamian Ur). The backache did not help (disk problem) and my focus was on facilitating the multi-issues, multi-stakeholder and multi-participant workshop, which took place 30 minutes outside Aleppo, at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas ICARDA.
Just imagine though: The old Peugeots in town (ex-French colony), which integrate into a constant-juggling-for-position-but-fluid-nonaggressive traffic; the Mediterranean meza tapas food, the tractors and amazingly decorated trucks (like in India?) driving on the motorway, the motorcyclists driving in the opposite direction on the (so very close) highway's curb, the hot but dry climate, the sprawling built-upness of the city, the surprise of seeing trees lining streets, the bazaary inner-city shopping streets sub-divided into the 'diesel motor' or 'tyres alley' (I never even made it to the Souk), the Lebanese white wine I sipped whilst listening to the cacophony of muezzin callings on a hotel terrace in the Christian part of town; not to forget the general friendliness and the good-looking males; nor the shopkeeper laying out his praying carpet towards Mecca at five o'clock in the morning (backaches make you look out the window at that time of day). I hope to be back; maybe you, too?
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