It's said that of all the senses, smell is most closely linked to memory. Certainly the odour of the souq is unforgettable: a heady cocktail of charcoal smoke and exhaust fumes, grilled meat, blood, raw fish, sweat, the perfumed aromas of cardamom, coriander and cinammon, mint, coffee, tea, and apple tobacco, baklava, leather. Yet all the senses are overwhelmed by the onslaught of the bazaar. The clamourous noise of feet on cobbled stones, vendors calling out their wares to the masses: "yallah yallah yallah", engines and horns advertising the improbable progress of cars and vans through the slender passageways of the market, the racket as tea sellers clash their pots and pans like cimbals, the Arabic pop music that blares from innumerable tinny stereo speakers, the hammering of cobblers, sparks flying from their stone wheels. Charcoal smoke drifts across the narrow cobbled alleyway from the kebab stalls on either side, dappling the late afternoon sunlight as it seeps in through the leaking roof, illuminating the colours of cloth, spices, fruits in a beautiful orange glow.
All manner of humanity mingles together in the teeming crowds: Iraqi refugees, the women in their conservative black chadors and the men in their white robes and distinctive red and white keffiyehs, fashionably dressed Syrian teenagers, an occasional Western tourist, small boys in European football shirts boasting the names of all the usual suspects: Beckham, Zidane, Ronaldo (x2), and a few more prosaic ones besides: Mido, Haji, and the various stars of the recent Asian Cup-winning Iraqi side.
If Istanbul's famed Grand Bazaar was something of a disappointment, a Disneyfied, Westernised perversion of the Oriental souq of romantic myth and legend, Aleppo's vast medieval marketplace lives up to every expectation. Stepping through the ancient wooden gate from Bab Antakya street is like taking a time machine back to the 15th Century. While outside is a congested, polluted, 21st century city, in here the only concessions to the modern world are the babbled conversations into mobile phones and the occasional transit van struggling through the throngs of shoppers. In many other respects little has changed here since the Ottomans held sway over this western outpost of the Silk Road. Aleppo vies with its more famous neighbour to the south, Damascus, for the title of 'oldest city in Syria'; both compete with Jericho, just across the Green Line in the Occupied West Bank, for the honour of being the world's oldest metropolis. Wandering the glorious covered souqs, it's not hard to believe the claims of "Haleb", as it's known to locals, to be the oldest surviving outpost of human civilisation.
Yet it would do Syria's second city, and the country as a whole, a grave disservice to dwell too much on ancient history. Much to the surprise of many I suppose, I can confirm that Syria is a booming modern nation far removed from the nightmarish Islamist stereotypes of Western governments and media. Rather than the monolithic mass of Muslim extremists, baying for Western blood, religion (and politics) seem as nuanced here as in the West. Different sects, interpretations, and branches of Islam provide a huge diversity of appearance, behaviour, and belief. Somewhat surprisingly off-licences and bars aboundhere, as do scantily clad teenage girls, for many there seems no contradiction in wearing tight jeans, plunging necklines and layers of makeup with a (jauntily-angled of course) Islamic headscarf. Mobile phones, and irritating ringtones, are as ubiquitous here as anywhere else, while camera phones enable every moment, no matter how banal, to be preserved for posterity.
But old habits die hard. The famous Arab hospitality survives here as well as anywhere. If I had a pound, even a worthless Syrian pound, for every time I'd heard "Ahlan wa Sahlan" ("hello and welcome") since I arrived here, I'd be a rich man. It's a tough call, but I think Syrians might be even friendlier than Egyptians. There's certainly no hint of hostility towards Westerners here, not that I expected there would be, but I'm sure some did. I've had my picture taken with three or four random locals, had dozens of conversations in halting English, French, and Arabic with passing Syrians, and even chatted with a couple of delightful Muslim girls, students at Aleppo University, who despite wearing the hijab, seemed totally oblivious to any perceived negative implications of flirting with strange Western men like myself. I even had a brief exchange with a charming Iraqi gentleman, one of the 2 million refugees who have swelled Syria's population by more than 10% since the disastrous "liberation" of their homeland in 2003. Admirably Mahmoud bore no discernible malice to me personally, realising, like most in this part of the world, the difference between individuals and governments.
The friendliness, tolerance, and hospitality of the Syrian people is staggering, especially when compared to the negative stereotypes propogated so often in the West. This is a modern, economically developed, surprisingly liberal country, And yet, for all its modern accoutrements, the hospitality and generosity speak of an older, more gentle age, while the physical reminders of the past are all around; nowhere more so than in the incredible souq. Turkey is well-known for its east-west, ancient-modern, secular-Islamic contradictions, perhaps Syria should be too?
