Bulgaria – Lebanon
Technically, all we needed to do at the border was to pay for our visas that had been already issued to us and to get our passports stamped. Harry and Fadi collected the money and passports and disappeared in the building. The group waited outside, and waited and nothing happened. We milled around the area talking to each other, using this time to get to know our fellow travelers. Sometimes, Fadi or Harry emerged from the building with concerned looks on their faces and went inside again. Three hours later, immigrations processed 3 visas out of 14.
The night fell, we were hungry and tired from standing outside. At last, Harry and Fadi came back with all our passports, we were good to go. Fadi looked exhausted and angry. He said that these officials did not know what they were doing, they also demanded extra money and he promised to report them to higher authorities.
Our bus moved a few meters, only to be stopped by a uniformed man. He requested to see our passports. Then the bus moved a little more and stopped again. This time, it was customs. They wanted to inspect our luggage. They opened one suitcase and let us go. After that, we stopped a couple of times more at checkpoints until another uniformed man told us to go back to immigrations. Fadi had enough of this. He said something firmly in Arabic, the man stepped back and from there we rode without interruptions until at midnight, we came to the restaurant in Tartus where we were supposed to have dinner hours ago. The restaurant staff was waiting for us despite the late hour.
We were driving through the nighttime Taurus and two things struck me as unusual. First, it was almost completely dark – no street lights, no lighted windows in residential buildings, no illuminated shops or bright neon signs; only a single dim light here and there. Apparently, the state hardly provides electricity to its citizens. They mostly rely on own power generators. Generators need oil to work, and, theoretically, every person receives a quota of monthly oil supply. In practice, this oil is difficult to get and it is not enough anyway. Syrians buy their oil at the black market where they need to know their seller well. Otherwise, they may end up with oil diluted with water.
The other interesting things about the nightlife in Syria was that there were vendors with fresh fruit and vegetables on the streets, people sitting in cafes as if it was not well past midnight and very dark.
It was 3 a.m. when I, at last, went to bed in my hotel room, well-fed, a bit tipsy, and fatigued from stress, not enough sleep the night before and a very long road to Syria. I was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. I woke up in 4 hours refreshed, went to the breakfast area, and found myself there alone. Everyone else came down a lot later.
The plan for the day was to see the old town of Tartus, a visit to the National Museum which was a Catholic cathedral in its past life and a trip to Arwad Island, the only inhabited island in Syria.
After the day of sightseeing and a good dinner at The Swan restaurant we returned to the hotel. I called my husband to report on our activities. A loud boom sounded in the middle of our conversation and the ground shook.
‘Erm, I think I heard an explosion…’ I said.
‘Oh, come on, it cannot be,’ he did not believe me.
‘No, seriously, it is hard to mistake this sound for something else.’
We learned in the morning that it was an explosion. The IDF bombed a research center in Syria in Tartus vicinity. Well, it was too late to be scared by it now. We were moving on.