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| Operation Iraqi Freedom by Quétinbec 12/31/2009, 4:00am PST | ||||
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| I want to preface this with a few things:
I have an STD I haven't been able to treat that causes my dick to burn and my asshole to leak. The asshole thing could just be the Giardia flaring up again, but that's hardly a silver lining. An ankle I thought I had sprained 9 weeks ago is still swollen, still painful, still lacks its complete range of motion, and was probably a fracture not a sprain. These ailments mean I can't fuck, play sport, or ride bikes, which are my three primary ways of letting off steam, so a lot of shit has been getting pent up inside me. I used to think I was untouchable because if anything bad happened to me, my parents would bail me out, but my parents are no longer in a position to do this. Irene Wong, the person I'm closest to in all the world, has stopped talking to me because she's found a new Chinese guy my age and star sign. Anyway, with this as a backdrop, I went for a holiday to the most depressing place on Earth, the Middle East, during winter. Today, I'll make some notes about an "incursion" into the Syrian Arab Republic: --------------- Either the Americans banned exports to Syria, or the Syrians banned American imports, but either way, nothing American is allowed in. This means you've got all these crazy Russian and Chinese cars driving around. That's cute, but what isn't is that Mastercard, Visa, and the Cirrus network are considered American products. That means if you find one of the 5 ATM's in Syria, you won't be able to do shit with it, which means I was very short on my most powerful weapon: money. I came into the country with about $US400 in Turkish Lira. The Lira is banned here, but I was able to convert them into Syrian pounds via the black market at a poor rate of exchange. I was a poor man. At the Turkish/Syrian border, there was an American who asked the bus company how long it would take to get our VISAs processed at the border. They said 4 hours for Americans and 20 minutes for all other nationalities. A Canadian I was with asked, "So we have to wait four hours for any Americans?" and the response was, "No. We never wait for the Americans." which I thought was hilarious at the time. I did a lot of walking in my Time in Syria. I'd walk around the cities for 6-8 hours a day because there was fuck all else to do. Scammers and theives target tourist 'hotspots', so, counter intuitively, you're safer in the ghettos. Most of the Syrians were very, very nice, though. I walked into a fence while walking around at night and a Syrian who saw laughed at me, so I approached him to ask for directions for a church I was looking for. After he'd helped me he asked, "Is English the only language of your country?" "Yes." "So you can listen to the Americans perfect then?" "Yes, we get a lot of American TV." "Do you understand the American's thinking?" "Sometimes." "Do you agree with the Americans?" "Sometimes." "Thank you, sir! Thank you so much!" *fucking huge smile* "Thanks..... Thank you." Another guy asked me if I'd ever driven an American car and seemed disappointed when I said I had and it was a piece of shit. I only saw a handful of foreigners in all my time down south. It was very lonely. More than half of them, surprisingly, were single, middle aged, Japanese or Korean women! I say surprisingly, but who else would be stupid enough to go to Syria in Winter. I asked one why she came and she said she didn't know. When she asked me, I said, "Because the weather in Turkey was shit" and we both laughed. Fuck Syria! After a few days, I made my way south and into one of the dodgiest looking hotels in the dodgiest area. I'm not sure if I was hoping for it to double as a brothel or not. Would that make my life easier or more difficult? A lot of them do double, though, and this one had mirrors and security cameras and five filthy looking guys permanently in the lobby. The manager refused to shake my hand after I'd paid him. Bad signs. I noticed my door had been kicked in at some point, too. They'd rescrewed the metal doorhandle back on, but a lot of the wood was missing so it was fucked. It was a two stage lock and one twist to the right wasn't enough to keep the door from opening. Two twists with the lock fully extended and the bottom corner of the lock made enough contact that you'd have to kick the door slightly hard to get in. Worrying. This meant I couldn't leave behind all my most valuable shit while searching the riskier neighborhoods. The room was a shithole. The toilet didn't flush; there was a hose by the toilet you used to "push" your shit down into the drain. There were no sheets, but two dirty blankets and pillows. Adding to my suspicion of its brothelness, as I was searching my blankets for cum stains, I found 4 flakes of glitter. I thought it would be like the hotels in Vietnam, where if you're a single guy staying on your own, you'll get a knock on the door late at night from a whore. This would require a bit of initiative on the part of the Arabs, though. I was very tired. I went to bed early, but left my light on so that any whores or pimps passing by would think I was awake and perhaps proposition me. I woke up every hour or so to the noise of people. Perhap I was woken by a knock but they only knocked once so wasn't able to recognize or act on it. I did hear female voices. At 1am, after waking up for maybe the 4th time to noises, I turned my light off. Just in walking around the next day, though, I ran into a number of Iraqis. You could tell them from the Syrians because there aren't really street kids in the Middle East. Muslims are very good at taking care of their own, and Arabs have no problems using slaves, so any "excess" humans usually find a place. A couple of million refugees, though, has proven too much for that system. Most of the Iraqis either did nothing, begged, shined shoes, or sold Spriographs on the street. I'm not kidding! There were kids selling Spirographs everywhere. They're huge in the Middle East right now. I was most surprised at how poor the Iraqis were at begging and emotional manipulation. Like, they're the worst beggers I've ever met. I've lived in countries where begging and emotional blackmail is a massive industry, and while kids in those countries are very fucking good at it, you'd kind of see the adult hand involved and not feel guilty about turning them down flat. Children don't instinctively cartwheel in front of your car, kiss your feet, threaten to mutilate themselves, or any of the other shit some asshole trains them to do, and there was none of that here. You could tell that these kids were completely on their own and didn't have a fucking clue. In fact, one begger followed me halfway down the street without me noticing he was there, he was that timid. The most difficult thing for me was seeing them happy. I'm used to brushing aside miserable children with their hands out. There was a filthy Iraqi girl missing a leg under an overpass, and she was sliding herself around on a piece of cardboard laughing and trying to chase her younger sister. I didn't give her any money, though. Up until the age of, I think, 9-10, they still look quite normal, and then they get old enough to realize how fucked they are, and their eyes go dead, and they look scary. I didn't look for any whores that night. That wasn't entirely for moral reasons. I was very tired. Also, I can't pretend to be a good person, either, because if a whore had come to my door, I'd probably have fucked her - dead eyes or no. I used the word incursion earlier because that's how they made it feel. For instance, I tried to get out of Syria into Turkey in a Taxi with two Lebanese, myself and another Arab - I'm not sure from where. I was the only one of those three who got out. One of the Lebanese was told his stamp was in the wrong place. They argued with the soldiers for 30 minutes and then went into a side room but their bribe attempt was unsuccessful and they had to travel back to they Syria/Lebennon border (16 hour return bus ride) to get the stamp in the right place. I don't know what happened to the other Arab but he didn't get out either. The soldiers asked if I'd been to "Occupied Palestine". Why the fuck would I go to Palestine? (I found out later that's how they refer to Israel) I said I hadn't left Syria. They had asked me all these questions on the way in. Either they're stupid, angling for a bribe, or their Western borders are fucked. Probably all three. I only had to pay $15 in bribes to get out. A bargain. The border taxi's only treat passengers as an afterthought. We're just their excuse to smuggle things across the border. Our taxi was smuggling whiskey into Turkey then cigarettes into Syria. He had a shitload of Chivas Regal where his spare tire should be. He didn't try to hide it from us. He was worried our bags in the back would smash down on the whiskey so he spent ages packing things right. He needed to buy something at Duty Free using my passport so he could drive down the "Something to Declare" lane where he was friendly with one of the Turkish policemen. I did quite a lot to help him in his smuggling - or at least, I was very cooperative - but he still tried to fuck me over when we got to Turkey. He pulled the taxi over and said I needed to pay him more or he'd kick me out in the middle of nowhere. He was quite surprised by my lack of resistance. I was very tired and very happy to be the fuck out of Syria. I also wanted to get rid of remaining Syrian Pounds so I offered him more than he demanded. He didn't treat me like shit after that, though. He even gave me very good logistical advice, which I suppose you should expect from a smuggler. So, no fucks in that country. Happy new years. |
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