When Scott C. Davis, ’70, was a senior at Stanford, he climbed a new route up Yosemite’s El Capitan. Seventeen years later, he sought a challenge “which would equal in its own way the summits of my youth.” He put his construction business on hold and spent three months in Syria, a place he knew next to nothing about. His encounters then and in 2001—unnerving, hilarious, uplifting, ironic—put a human face on an enigmatic nation and unveiled a surprising affection for Americans and their culture, as his book The Road from Damascus reveals.
November 1987. I caught a bus to the village of Afrin, looking for the soul of the Syrian people in the red earth of the countryside—an embarrassing, romantic notion, I admit. Walking up the main street, I peered through doorways to see men weaving rugs on ancient looms made from poles and twisted ropes. When I passed a tiny candy shop, the proprietor, a big beefy guy of about 30, blocked my path and made a violent hacking motion.
“Police,” he said. “I am police.”
The secret police, or mukhabarat, had made me tense, weary and nauseated since my first hour in Syria. This time, however, I was not entirely convinced.
“I am police. I can throw you in the prison and slap you around, and you be crying for mercy,” the man said, half in English, half in pantomime.
I handed him my passport, whereupon he motioned me into his store and blocked my exit. I was his prisoner. He read my passport carefully, though I noticed he was holding it upside down and did not seem to have a weapon. When he finished, he began to interrogate me. “Who do you come to see?” he said. “Names! Names!”
Since the secret police in Syria did not wear uniforms, I could not be sure he was not one of them. But it occurred to me that the mukhabarat, if nothing else, had a sense of dignity. A member of the mukhabarat never would go undercover as a mere candy store operator. I grabbed my documents, wormed my way past my captor, and bid him adieu. Just then a man on a motorcycle pulled up.
“Police,” he said. “I am the police.” He did not have a weapon, either.
“You can’t be the police,” I said and pointed at the big guy from the candy store. “He’s the police.” I looked over at the women and children crowding around us. “Are all of you police?”
I was getting tired of this, and the crowd was curious, not terrified, so I knew that these guys were impostors. I began to leave. Then the man ordered me to get on the back of his motorbike so that he could be a good host and give me a tour. “These guys are the detritus at the bottom of a police state,” I thought. “When do they get to exercise power? Only when a hapless tourist stumbles along.” I declined the tour and kept walking. I needed to get on the bus back to Aleppo before anyone else decided to detain me.
“Qiff! Qiff!” I heard. Stop! Stop!
Two men with AK-47s blocked my path. One was tall and angry-looking and seemed to be in charge. He made the hacking motion. I handed over my passport and prepared to wait while he examined it. But he slipped it into his pocket. “Mukhabarat in a hurry,” I thought. “An ominous development.”
“Idkhil al-sayyarah,” my captor ordered. Get in the truck.
His companion motioned with his machine gun toward their Toyota pickup. I was pretty sure that these guys did not run a candy store. We drove a few blocks and went into an unmarked building, passing dark cells with brown stains—bloodstains? —on the walls and floors. The two men led me to an office, then stood to each side with military precision and looked straight ahead, saying nothing, as they presented their captive, a dangerous spy from America.
I faced a gray steel desk. Behind it was a man with a shaved head. He sighed and looked at me.
“How many friends you have in Afrin?” the headman asked. “Names! Please, it will be easier if you give me the names.”
This was a great chance to repay the candy store owner for his hospitality, but I did not have his name.
“Tell us, why are you here in Afrin?”
“I came to look at the scenery,” I said. The tall guy puckered his lips and made a sound of disgust. I was his catch, and now I was turning out to be not much of a prize. I felt that I had let him down.
The mukhabarat were recruited from Syria’s traditional underclass. They had power, but little respect. So their dealings with an American became a way of asserting status. I needed to show them that I took them seriously. I needed to feed them a flagrant lie. My statement was pedestrian, an insult to their rujoolah, their manhood, but I could think of nothing better.
The headman sighed once more. He could wait no longer. He placed my passport in an envelope, which he licked, sealed and placed on the table. And now for more serious business. His face became rigid. He stood and spoke rapid lines to my captors, who stiffened at their posts. “It’s happening,” I thought. He strode across the room, closed the door behind him. I was alone with two silent men and their automatic rifles.
I heard a scratching and bumping at the door. “It’s the headman,” I thought, “returning with some kind of paraphernalia.” I decided to run. I wanted to be outside where there were witnesses, but my captors grimaced and fingered their weapons, and it struck me that they were waiting for an excuse, that they wanted me to make a move. Then the door swung open, and it was the headman, his face red and dropping sweat, and I tensed and started to move, but those weapons! I slumped back in my chair, then heard a clattering noise and looked up. The headman carried—what was this?—a tray with four small teacups and a steaming samovar. He set it on his desk and looked at me with a slight smile. “Chai?” he asked.
After our tea party the headman explained that my offense was serious and I would have to be interrogated at police headquarters in Aleppo. I still didn’t know what my offense was, but decided to go along with the program. Driving to town in a new Suzuki, we listened to a station that broadcast Western music. “This,” said the announcer, “is the Voice of America.”
At the immense concrete headquarters I was tortured by guards who forced me to sit alone and watch Lassie reruns on TV. My suffering only increased when I considered that the guards thought they were being hospitable. At last, just as Lassie was swimming to retrieve the canoe paddle before her master was swept over a waterfall, the chief inquisitor called.
I went into another room and sat in a straight-backed chair. “Ah, you are from Washington,” the inquisitor began. “My brother is in Washington. Two months ago he got his green card. Here in Aleppo we have a party to celebrate, the whole family.”
He seemed curious about one thing. “Why didn’t your wife come with you?” he asked.
“I didn’t think she’d like the way you treat tourists,” I said.
The guy winced, and tears came to his eyes. He turned away and dabbed with a handkerchief. Great. So now I felt guilty for having hurt the feelings of the secret police.
“I’ll bring her next time,” I said. “She’s never seen anything like this country. The hospitality of Syrians has been quite unusual.”
With these words my inquisitor recovered his composure enough to jot down my answers to a dozen routine questions. Yet something still blocked my release: I would have to pass a more rigorous exam before the director.
An hour later, a short, fierce-looking man in a blue suit arrived, examined the documents and explained that in a situation this serious, justice could not be obtained through normal procedures.
“You see this coin,” he said as he held a half-lira piece for me to inspect. One side had an eagle, the other the number 50. “I will flip, you call.”
The coin came up eagle for me three out of five, and I was free to go.
Scott C. Davis, ’70, has written for the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and Damascus-based Ad-Domari. He lives in Seattle. Excerpt adapted from The Road from Damascus (Cune Press, 2003) reprinted by permission. © 2003 Scott C. Davis
