Aleppo and a brand new baby

We’re now on day three of life in Aleppo, sat by the Sheraton swimming pool admiring the higgledy-piggledy city from the monolithic and hideous - but calm - walls of the hotel. It hasn’t all been like this.



Upon arrival we utilised our very smooth Arabic skills - “Salaam alaykooooom! Errrr, do you know errr cam-errr-ahhh shop? Can-non? We buy where?” (Yes. Our language skills are on fire) - and following an exhaustingly hot goose chase around town, we finally struck gold in an underground warren of shops stuffed wall-to-wall with spare car parts and tyres. Well, where else?



Sat behind a filthy desk, smeared in what I assumed to be oil, sat a rotund man who knew a man, who knew another man that owned a shop nearby in which sat a dusty and forlorn looking Canon digital camera.

After some equally smooth haggling, we took the replacement camera baby to explore the new city of Aleppo. I say new city, but what I actually mean is ‘newer city’.

Aleppo is reputedly one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world and the Al-Jdeida quarter was built during the Ottoman era, which makes it approximately 600 years old. Pretty old for a new guy.

So fuelled by a novel breakfast of fava bean soup and raw onions with flat bread, we set off down the crooked alleys to find an almost indecent abundance of photography opportunities.




It was a Friday so the streets were shuttered and peaceful; devoid of women, pavements dotted with turbaned and sleepy men languishing in the shade.