As I ride the early morning bus towards the Turkey - Syria border my knuckles are as white as the shroud of fog that envelopes these post dawn hours.
The road gets worse as the fog thickens. The lady across the aisle is reading a newspaper. The headline is about a bus crash in Egypt that killed many tourists.I take some solace in the fact that I am the only tourist on the bus. The Turkish news on the T.V. is showing an endless array of traffic horrors captured by security video.
I can't see anything outside the window and the televised traffic carnage is harshing my mellow, so I put on my headphones and look down while reminding myself that every moment is a leap of faith and that we are all hurtling helplessly into the unknown at all times, foggy bus notwithstanding.
As we arrive at the Turkish border, there is a phalanx of trucks, a line so extensive that it should take days to clear. Fortunately, passenger vehicles are allowed to jump this cue. I find myself disembarking the bus and following the smallish herd to a kiosk where I present my passport to a Turkish official.
When I checked in for this bus ride, I surrendered my passport to an official of the bus company. I was told that my passport would be returned to me on the bus and it was. In the interim the bus company reported to Turkish border officials my personal details, but they made a mistake and listed my first name as David, which is my middle name.
This discrepancy is enough to cause my luggage to be pulled off the bus as I am searched and pulled aside for questioning. I think to myself that if this was a plane instead of a bus it would be a serious problem. Thank God that there isn't a "No Bus" list. (yet) Eventually things are cleared up and I get back on board.
We drive for a few minutes through the brown mountainous backdrop. We arrive at another gate and are waved through. We drive for several more minutes and I begin to wonder: Is that it?......am I in Syria?....Hell no.
Crossing any border makes me nervous, and I tend to feel like a kid being called into the principal's office. Crossing into Ghana scared me because it was my first trip to Africa. Crossing into Cambodia scared me because of its history. Crossing into Syria scares me because of the sheer foreignness of it all.
English speakers are few and far between, the country is not tourist oriented, and maybe I have seen too many movies.
We move into the Syrian border building, and as I stand in line I feel my heart pounding, flummoxed by the strangeness of my surroundings. I jostle with the crowd and finally make my way to the front. I hand over my passport, but in my nervousness, I have failed to fill out a customs declaration.
It is at this moment that I have a little freakout. I can't understand what anyone is saying amidst this crowd and I can't explain what I'm trying to say and I am such an idiot because I'm at a border without a pen, all of my pens having been packed deeply into my luggage after going through Turkish airport security 198 million times!!!
In my panic, I shriek out Pen! Pen! Pen!, like some crazed character from a Kids In The Hall sketch. Nothing but blank stares as I think to myself that I am going to be denied access to Syria for want of a pen. Finally a kindly stranger looks into my by then manic eyes and asks with utter calmness "Do you mean something to write with?"
Yes! He pulls a pen from his pocket and helps me fill out the form. I thank him profusely and he says proudly "Welcome to my country, you are welcome in Syria". It would be the first of many times that I would hear that statement.
With a little more finagling, I find myself in Syria. I notice that the fog that was plaguing us inexplicably disappears the moment we cross the frontier, as if it had been denied entry by Syrian border officials.
On to Aleppo.
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