Aleppo, Syria.

As the snowflakes were falling I remember, I felt like I was home. The home you can find anywhere if only you open your heart to it. We step away from it often, but then suddenly, like déjà vu something will remind us, a faint smell in the air, a reflection off a wet street, a look in somone's eye. It is a home sometimes real, sometimes one we imagine to be, and possibly one that the powers above have left in us to remind us of something we can only faintly remember.  I had known the feeling before... even on the other side of the world away from all my close friends and family, I was home.

Only one month before I had been frolicking in the sand dunes of Siwa and then, there I was in Syria, 20 miles from the Turkish border in a city that looks like a Prague with Minarets. It was beautiful. It was cold. It was Christmas. It was not what the middle east was supposed to feel like. Outside the city of 4 million people was a desert. On the inside, a warm glow from the windows of shops and Christmas lights... There were Kebabs grilling, street venders hawking and bartering and women wearing Hijabs. They smiled as they walked by and I thought it funny I could see the breath coming out of the Muslim women's mouths.  I had spent so much time in the scorching 110 degree musky heat of Egypt watching donkey carts full of blindfolded chickens go by that I wasn't prepared for this sudden cold mixed with inner peace as I walked past beautifully polished cars on this Syrian street.  In the distance I could hear the familiar call to prayer which started from a loud speaker hanging from a Minaret, whose sound would echo through the streets until it hit each ear at different times. I closed my eyes and breathed in. The pinch of cold in my nose felt so good. I could have been on a ski lift about to race moguls, or riding a horse next to Grandpa elk hunting in the dark at 5am. But there I was in Syria, a place officially at war with Israel, a place where Al Qaida and Hezbollah train. From where I stood I could see a huge medieval crusaders castle. Aleppo had been a stronghold for Christians and soldiers during the crusades.  The fortress appeared impenetrable with motes and drawbridges and if I remember the tour guide correctly it was never taken by force.


Maybe the feeling within me came from the fact that Aleppo is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. It has had a continuous population for over 4,000 years. It lies only a few hundred miles from Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.  When walking through the valley of the kings, you realize that these massive monuments were built so long ago... but they were abandoned to be half covered in sand with only millennia of goat herders and adventurers to glimpse upon them.  Aleppo's people were there all along.

I walked past a store that looked particularly warm and inviting, my sweet tooth probably swayed me quite a bit.  I could see the chocolate in the window and knew I had to go in and have a taste.
Egyptian Arabic, and even the standard 'Fosha' are quite different from Syrian. Having a conversation with people was a bit like my current adventure of speaking to people in Mandarin and they answer me back in Cantonese.  A bit funny, some full body acting and mutually intelligible words and you can get the meaning across.
The chocolate store was cozy and it smelled just the way I know my heaven will smell. The name of the store was Patchi. I had never heard of it before, but I have since become very fond of it and watched it grow throughout the world. I've been to Patchi in Dubai and even Hong Kong and Macau. This Aleppo store was though one of the very first.  The ladies inside were so kind and even excited as my friend and I talked to them about their beautiful city.  Who knew complimenting someone's city would end up in so much free chocolate.

This post is not finished.  晚安。