Departing Post

Well, my friends, it has come. It is time for me to leave Damascus and begin my two-week tour of the Middle East. I refuse to make the typical, “it feels like just yesterday” comment, because, honestly, it feels like a lifetime ago that I stepped off Turkish Airlines flight 0952 to Damascus. Naturally, it is odd to think that I have been living here for seven weeks, but that is because there were many times when I thought I would never get used to the Middle Eastern lifestyle, and now it is fun and (mostly) easy, not because it went by in a flash.

As for my coming travels…

From here I will head to Beirut with my roommate Rob. We will spend one night there and then head to the mountains in east Lebanon for four days of proper backpacking and camping. We will start in a town just north and east of Beirut and finish in a town just south and east of Tripoli, sleeping by the trail along the way. We will stay a night in Tripoli and then Rob will head back to Syria and I will spend a few days in Beirut before catching a flight to Jordan. In Jordan, I will meet up with Greg, who has been in Egypt for two weeks, and together we will head into Israel for five days. On the 3^rd of August, Greg will head east for more travel and I will fly to Istanbul, where I will spend two days staring at the Bospherus and maybe get wildly drunk for the first time in two months, before catching my plane to JFK on the 5^th.

I could not ask for more from my experience in Damascus, except in the way that we, as humans, always ask for more. I improved my Arabic, I made good friends, made some bad ones, met interesting people, met boring people, experienced life in a totally new place, and learned a lot about how I live and about how others do. I found the love of a lifetime (see post from June 27^th), and reaffirmed my affinity for popcorn and Diet Coke. I shed more than twenty pounds and more than twice the equivalent in anxieties and unfounded prejudices. I did it and it is done: I jumped in with both feet and I have no regrets.

Well, actually, I have two regrets:

First, I wish I had handled my blog differently. As nice as it was to share my experiences with all of you, I do feel that the blogging was a bit of a waste. The abridged, censored, and watered-down writing style that I had to adopt in order to keep my posts easily readable, to make this page socially and politically acceptable, and to avoid frightening any of my readers at home, definitely detracted from the quality and honesty of the finished product. In my own journal I was able to go into detail about the intensity of my emotions and the enormous effect that this trip has had on me, but on the blog I had to watch what I said.

I would have loved to be able to write with more detail about how excruciatingly lost I felt during my first few weeks, but I could not, because I have anxious parents who love me very much and don’t want me to suffer. I also did not want an inbox flooded with worried e-mails, and did not want to have friends and family thinking that my experience was not a good one just because it wasn't stress-free.

I would have loved to delve into the depth of the mental challenges that I struggled with on a regular basis, but the idea of giving away my deepest limitations and weaknesses on blogspot.com is abhorrent to me. Maybe in a book, but not so long as my feelings would remain one click away from FrEaKySyRiA86; my hubris is simply too large.

I would have loved to sing the praises of the merits of travel, and express my gratitude for all of the growth I have experienced here, but I did not want to seem overly self-satisfied and vain, and, more importantly, I wanted to keep some things for myself. I believe that important thoughts can easily lose some of their impact when they are over-simplified for web publication.

As a result, as some of you may have predicted from the passage above, I have decided to stop posting for the remainder of my trip. I am going to take the next two weeks to write for myself. I am going to read, take pictures, see the sites, socialize, and enjoy the last stretch of this journey without feeling obligated to explain the process to a remote audience. My plan is to post once more, during the few days after I return to the states, so, if you are interested, look for that between the 5^th and the 10^th of August. If you don't see it, well, sorry, I guess I got busy. Andrew: I pass the blog torch back to you. For god’s sake write about something other than bicycles.

My second regret is that, when I leave Damascus behind, I will also be leaving behind the most delicious hummus on the planet. In my will I have added that, in addition to Duck Pond in Cape Cod, the mountains of Colorado, the streets of New York City, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, I would like some of my ashes scattered in a bowl of my favorite hummus, for all to eat. In this way, I will return to Syria one day, and a piece of me will live on in yummy goodness forever, or until swallowed.

I hope you all have enjoyed reading, and if anyone besides my mom wants to be updated as to my whereabouts, please email me at eric.harris.bernstein@gmail.com, and I will be happy to keep you updated as I am able, for the remainder of the trip.

Take Care,

Eric